In Your Dreams
by BrightEyedBloodRush
Summary: The wall in Sam's head is down and time is running out. Castiel sends them to someone who can help, but are they able to pay the price she asks? More importantly, can they trust her despite her dark secret? OC, minimal romance.
1. Chapter 1: Changing Your Mind

**Author's Note:**

_Hey guys, so this is my first attempt at a Supernatural FanFiction, and I figured I'd give it a brief introduction._

_It takes place directly after the end of season 6, so watch out for spoilers. It does contain an OC but there won't really be much romance until way later on. Even then, it shouldn't consist of anything too adult. There is minor swearing, but not more than what you get on the actual show. _

_In terms of writing this, I tried to research it as much as possible, as well as stay true to the characters, so no need to worry about anyone acting OOC. I will try to include as many characters from the series as possible, without introducing too many blatant OCs. Please do keep in mind that I wrote this solely for my own enjoyment, but, if you do happen to spot any factual or grammatical errors, hit me up with a message and let me know. I don't mind criticism as long as it's constructive or, alternatively, creative. _

_Unfortunately, this chapter contains a lot of dialogue and very little action. I promise things will get more interesting; I just had to get introductions out of the way. Bear with me?_

_I guess I'm obligated to say that I don't own Supernatural or any of its characters. I'm also in no way associated with the show or the network. All of that should be obvious, though. _

_So, without further ado, here we go._

_..._

When you've been in the very worst circle of hell as long as Sam had, you tend not to spend much time in the present. Your mind drifts between what you're seeing at the moment and what you're remembering from before. You have to struggle every second to stay put, not to scream at the phantom pain, not to clutch your head to hold back the flood of flaming memories. Despite his best efforts, Sam was failing to stay in the present. He had managed to stab Castiel, but it had been in a dream-like state where he hadn't even been sure of what was real. It hadn't worked, anyway, as far as he could tell. Cas was saying something about being God, but Sam was finding it difficult to care while his skin was burning off. Was it? Wasn't it? Was that a memory? Yes? Wasn't it now? What?

"Sam? Sammy?" Dean, forgetting to be terrified of whatever Castiel had become, moved to Sam's side. Sam didn't remember falling to the floor, but he supposed he must have. Bobby stood his ground, keeping both the brothers and the corrupted angel in his line of vision.

"Sam? What's happening? Sammy?" Sam could feel the concern in his brother's voice, hear the desperation, and he answered as best as he could, given that he was only half there.

"Hell... it's, uh, pretty rough." Sam liked to think that he sounded a little sarcastic but, evidently, it was lost on Dean.

"I know, man. Just hang on. We're going to work this out." Dean turned accusingly to Cas, showing far less fear now that his brother's sanity was on the line. "Fix him."

Castiel regarded Dean sceptically. "You think I would help you? After all of the doubt you've shown me? I am not your servant, Dean. You cannot pull out your faith in me when you need it, then shelve it again when it suits you."

Dean swore, trying not to look too far in to the pain across his brother's face. "Dammit, Cas. If I ever meant anything to you, you'll help me now. You'll fix what _you_ did to Sam."

Sam, in his semi-aware state, could perceive the shaking rage spreading through Dean. It was the kind of rage that Dean only got when someone close to him was in danger. Sam hated being the cause of it, but he had his own pain to deal with, and he couldn't, for the life of him, think of anything to say to Dean that would make things better.

"Dean, I can't." Cas' words were tinged with vague regret, but no more than that. The old Cas' penchant for inner turmoil was apparently gone.

"Can't or won't?"

"Both," Cas snapped. "I've only just taken in all these souls. I don't have enough control over them to help your brother without making his head literally explode. Furthermore, Dean, you lost the right to ask me favours the moment you lost faith in me."

Dean glared at Cas. "Fine. Maybe I don't deserve a favour from your royal friggin' highness, but Sam deserves some sort of payback after he sacrificed his soul to stop the apocalypse. The same soul that you forgot to fish out of the pit. You're the reason he's this twisted, Cas. Maybe I don't deserve a favour, but Sam sure as hell does."

Castiel's expression didn't even flicker as he reached in to his pocket and pulled out a small, white business card, handing it to Bobby without breaking eye-contact with Dean. "Take Sam there. Say I sent you. There's no guarantee, but it's his best hope right now."

Bobby gingerly took the business card and gave it a once-over. "The address isn't too far from here. If we hurry, we can be there by morning."

Dean was quiet for a long moment, staring in to Cas' eyes, trying to find a shred of emotion. There wasn't anything except a restrained irritation, probably due to the fact that Dean wasn't crawling around pledging loyalty to the new God.

"Thanks," Dean finally said, his tone stiff.

"I think," Cas began slowly, his eyes never leaving Dean's, "that you should have a little more faith in God, Dean."

And with that, Castiel was gone.

...

"This the place?"

The impala pulled up next to an old, two-storey cabin at the edge of the woods. Its shutters were all wide open, presumably to let in the morning light, but no flowers grew in the window boxes and no paint adorned the faded walls. The place still had a distinctly cared-for feel, though, as the surrounding area was obviously kept clean, and a straggly, but pretty wreath hung on the door.

"Anise," Bobby muttered as he and Dean approached the door, Sam leaning heavily on Dean as he tried to remember that he had to walk and not swat at the flames blooming across his chest.

"What?"

"The flowers in the wreath and around the porch. They're anise. They're supposed to protect against obsessive spirits."

"Your point?" Dean asked impatiently.

Bobby shrugged. "It just seems strange. They're not a common safeguard."

"Meeting someone strange; that's new," Dean rolled his eyes. "Can we move on?" With that, he banged his fist against the door, shifting a little under Sam's weight. "Hang on, Sammy. You're going to be okay," he murmured.

All three visibly tensed as they heard footsteps approach the door. They had no idea whether or not Cas had sent them in to a trap and, frankly, after the last couple of years and the way today was going, they wouldn't have been terribly surprised. They didn't even know what this guy was supposed to do. There was the sound of a key scraping a lock open and a bolt being moved back. Dean's free hand went to the gun tucked in to the back of his jeans, while Bobby's did the same. Sam's gun privileges had been revoked on the way over, when he had tried to shoot Satan, who had supposedly been in front of him. Bobby had narrowly avoided losing an ear.

The door opened slightly, and a pair of grey eyes set in to a smooth, tanned face looked out at the trio standing on the porch. Dean raised an eyebrow at Bobby, who shrugged back. Neither of them had expected a woman to answer the door.

"Can I help you?" Her voice was cool and controlled. The door was only slightly ajar, and Dean could see that there was still a chain linking it to the doorway. Glancing down, he noticed a thick line of salt on the floor. Clearly, this Kail guy they were supposed to be meeting wasn't taking any chances with lax security.

"Yeah, I'm Bobby, that's Dean, that's Sam." He gestured to each brother in turn. "We're here to see Kail. Is he in?" Bobby asked, his hand moving away from his gun. Dean's hand didn't move.

The woman's slender eyebrow was quirked slightly. It was a pretty expression on her. "I'm afraid the only Kail here is me, but if you'd like me to find a guy by that name, I'm sure I could look around." A small smile was pulling at the corner of her lips.

Bobby looked immediately embarrassed. "I'm sorry, we just thought..."

"It's fine," Kail cut in, smiling. "It's an odd name for a girl, anyway." Her gaze shifted from Bobby to Sam and Dean, and her smile faded. "He's hurt," she stated.

"Thank you, Doctor House," Dean grunted, shifting again as Sam sluggishly tried to fend off some invisible attacker.

Kail ignored Dean's sarcasm. "What happened?"

Bobby, seeing the frustration on Dean's face, quickly spoke before Dean could. "It's a long story. Can we come in?"

"Sure," she said slowly, her eyes staying on Sam's struggling form. "Just need to do a quick security check." Before Dean or Bobby could say anything, her eyes turned an incandescent, eerie blue. Dean's grip on his gun tightened and he moved to pull it on her. Before he completed the motion, though, her eyes were back to normal. Seeing the gun, Kail raised an eyebrow. "Calm down. I was just giving your souls a brief once over. I didn't even look past your intentions which, by the way, aren't bad."

With that, she shut the door, slid the chain out of its bracket, and opened the door again, this time wide enough to let the three men in to her house. Dean and Bobby paused before moving forward, stepping over the line of salt across her threshold. Sam's dragging feet broke the line, though, and, without a word, Kail knelt down and fixed it using a sack of salt that lay next to the doorway. While she worked, Dean silently gestured to Bobby to look up. Painted in white on the ceiling above the door was a flawless devil's trap. Straightening up, Kail eyed the gun in Dean's hand.

"You really should put that away. I'm not going to hurt you." As she spoke, she stepped out from under the devil's trap, a silent indication that, at least, she wasn't a demon.

Dean, still not feeling reassured, didn't move his gun hand. "You can look at people's souls?"

Kail rolled her eyes. "Yeah, Sherlock, how else would I heal them?" She looked confused. "Isn't that why you came?"

Dean blinked. Well, would explain why Cas had sent them to her. He slowly put his gun away. "Uh, yeah, it is. I was just... checking," he finished lamely, trying to avoid her gaze, which was growing more and more suspicious.

"How did you find me?" she demanded, taking a step back from Dean, Sam and Bobby, her hand reaching in to the back pocket of her jeans.

"Castiel sent us. He thought you might be able to help my brother." Dean figured that there was no point in beating around the bush. It felt stupid trying to hide the truth from someone who could, apparently, look at his soul.

Annoyance flashed across Kail's face, but she relaxed visibly, her hand moving away from whatever she was keeping in her back pocket. "Of course Cas sent you. He _would_ send a mess like this," she muttered as her eyes turned an unearthly blue again, examining Sam far more closely than she had at the door. As she looked, her expression became steadily more horrified and, as if she couldn't look anymore, her eyes returned to their normal colour. "Move him to the couch," she ordered, her voice a little choked as she gestured through a door on her left. "I'll be there in a second."

Noting her sudden change in tone, Dean did as he was told, shuffling himself and Sam in to a small but immaculate living room with a couch, an armchair by the window, an old television perched on a pile of books, and a writing desk that had clearly been in use for a couple of decades.

Kail moved swiftly to a table standing in the entrance hall, yanking open the drawer and taking out a syringe filled with amber liquid before following Bobby in to the living room.

"What's that?" Dean eyed the syringe suspiciously, standing between Kail and Sam, who was lying on the little couch with a good portion of his legs hanging off the edge. He was groaning something under his breath, his breathing becoming heavier.

"Relax, mama bear; it's just a tranquilliser. It'll let him sleep without having dreams. Believe me; it's far kinder than leaving him like he is now."

Dean didn't move, his eyes conveying a clear mistrust. Kail sighed impatiently. "Look, I don't like you."

"Well I don't trust you," Dean retorted.

Kail closed her eyes, taking in a deep breath before continuing in a measured tone. "You show up at my house with the mincemeat that is your brother's soul without warning. You pull a gun on me and I still let you in to my home. I didn't even ask you to disarm once you were past my threshold and I know that, between the three of you, you have at least five different weapons. The least that you could do, at this point, is stop being so rude to me in my own home and let me do my job to save _your_ brother's ass."

Dean stayed where he was, at least having the grace to look a bit embarrassed. Bobby shuffled uncomfortably. "Why are you tranquing him, though?"

"I can't do anything for him at this second because, frankly, I've never seen a soul this shredded before. Until I figure something out, he should probably sleep to avoid any more damage being done. The more you stand here, being a douche, the more messed up your brother's soul gets, and the more work I have to do to fix it." Her eyes were both steely and concerned, constantly flicking over to Sam's face. Reluctantly, Dean moved aside.

With quick, precise movements, Kail jabbed the needle in to Sam's neck and pushed down the plunger of the syringe, keeping her other hand on his forehead. He was burning up, but the stress lines along his forehead and between his eyebrows faded as the drug took effect. It would give him dreamless sleep for about an hour, and then go in to normal sleeping patterns until he was ready to wake up.

Satisfied that Sam was down for the count, Kail spoke without moving from her kneeling position next to him. "What the hell happened to him?" She asked, her voice quieter now, but still slightly on edge.

"Spent a year in hell with Michael and Lucifer," Dean supplied shortly.

Kail's eyes widened and she looked up at Dean. "You guys are the Winchesters?"

"You've heard of us?"

"When the apocalypse gets turned off at the last minute, it tends to be big news," Kail answered. "Your poor brother..." Her eyes were normal, but she appeared to be shuddering at the memory of what she'd seen. "They must've been _pissed_."

"Being trapped in a cage probably made them a little edgy. Is there anything you can do?" Dean, despite the heavy sarcasm, still looked incredibly worried, even though the immediate danger to Sam's mind was at bay.

Kail sighed and ran a hand through her hair. "Maybe. I've never seen anything this brutal before. It's a miracle he even woke up. I have to speak to Castiel."

"If his highness grants you an audience," Bobby said sarcastically, disgust plain on his features.

"What do you mean?"

"Haven't you heard? He's God now."

Kail swore under her breath. "You mean he got in to purgatory?"

"You knew about his plans?" Dean asked suspiciously.

"I knew he needed a lot of souls to defeat Raphael. God knows he asked me to heal enough of them. I knew purgatory was a prime target, but I didn't think that Castiel had it in him..." Kail looked genuinely disturbed by the news. "I thought he was better than that."

"So did we," Dean shrugged.

"In any case, I'm going to try and talk to him," Kail resolved, standing up. Her voice sounded braver than she looked. "Alone, if you don't mind," she added. "You guys want something to drink while you wait?"

"What's the strongest thing you've got?" Bobby asked. Both he and Dean needed a stiff drink after the events of the last 24 hours.

"Coffee. I don't drink alcohol."

"Of course," Bobby sighed heavily. It had just been one of those days. "I guess I'll have some coffee, then. Dean?"

"Nothing for me."

"Sure. Make yourselves comfortable. Especially you, Dean. You look like you're trying to glare me in to next Tuesday and it must be exhausting." Her dry remark lingered in the air behind her as she disappeared in to an adjoining room. Bobby snorted.

...

Ten minutes later, Dean and Bobby were seated around Sam in the living room, while Kail had gone upstairs to try and contact Castiel.

"I don't like this, Bobby. It's too..." Dean stood up and began pacing rather than finding a suitable adjective.

"Convenient?" Bobby supplied.

"Exactly." Dean cast about the living room, eyes falling on a framed photo sitting on the desk. Kail was in the middle, looking much younger and wearing graduation robes as well a radiant smile on her face. On either side of her were an older man and woman, crow's feet at the edges of their eyes as they beamed at the camera. The whole scene spoke of a happy carelessness and pride. It was a great photo but, for some reason that Dean couldn't put his finger on, the younger version of Kail stood out to him. He couldn't place it, but something about her as younger girl made memories of hell start bubbling to the surface. Dean was not feeling any more reassured about this girl. "Have you ever heard of someone who heals spirits, anyway?"

"Shamans, mostly, and she sure as hell doesn't look like one. Looks more like the girl next door, y'know?"

Dean begrudgingly grunted in agreement, eyes glued to the image of a younger Kail. "There's something weird about her, though," he said, turning away from the photo and shaking his head to clear it. "She's too..."

"Controlled?"

Dean nodded, and continued surveying the room. Fire extinguishers sat in almost every corner, well within reach, and obviously maintained to stay in perfect condition. "She's pretty paranoid. Did you see all the salt? The Devil's trap? All these extinguishers? What's she hiding from?"

"If she can heal souls like she says, it's a pretty rare gift. I'm sure plenty of nasties would love to get their hands on it," Bobby pointed out.

"I still don't like it."

Bobby sighed, taking a sip of his coffee. "Do we really have another choice, though, Dean? I don't like it much, either, but we're stuck between a rock and a weird place, here."

Dean stared at his brother sprawled across the couch, a muscle in his jaw jumping a little. "We keep our guard up and, if it gets too crazy, we pull out," he decided, not sounding very sure.

"Of course."

...

"Castiel? Castiel, you owe me an apology." Kail rarely even tried to phrase her calls as prayers. She knew Cas could hear her. Sure enough, a soft fluttering of wings alerted her to the sudden new presence in the room.

"Jeez, Castiel, you're allowed to appear in front of me, you know," She exhaled, turning around to face the arrival. "I heard about what you did."

"You know I had no choice."

"Yeah? And who's forcing you to hang on to all those souls now that you've beaten Raphael?" She folded her arms across her chest. "You're different with all of those souls, Cas. I'm only a little more sensitive than most humans, and the vibe that you give off is downright creepy."

Castiel's expression flickered, and then became stoic once more. "I need the souls to maintain control and, need I remind you, possibly help you?"

Kail regarded Castiel carefully for a long moment, her expression a bit softer. "It breaks my heart to see what this has done to you, Cas."

Castiel inclined his head. "I assume you didn't call me here to scold me?"

"I did, but not for your recent soul-binge. It's about my new guests. Since when do you get to advertise my services to _hunters,_ of all things? Not just any hunters, either. I mean, The Winchesters and Bobby Singer? What were you thinking?"

"I assumed you could handle it."

"Well, you assumed wrong," Kail snapped, then broke off, trying to get her temper under control before it got worse. "I heal souls for you all the time but, generally, they're not still in bodies. They also haven't been tortured in hell by _Satan himself_. Do you know how much it'll take to heal that soul? It's barely even a soul, anymore. It's barbeque meat. I could die trying to fix it. Even worse, I could lose control."

Castiel listened to Kail's complaints unsympathetically. "Your control is perfect, Kail, don't be dramatic. You don't have to heal the whole soul. You just have to make it... manageable."

Kail glared at Castiel, taking deep breaths to hold back the aggression threatening to build up inside her. "Dean doesn't trust me. Neither does Bobby."

"I believe the expression to use here is 'Join the club.'"

Figuring that Castiel clearly had no regard for her attempts at controlling her frustration, Kail moved to her bedside table, plucking a bottle of pills from it. After downing two pills, she closed her eyes for a moment, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth. She spoke again when she felt the drug taking effect, liquid calmness spreading through her body. "Did you tell them what I am?"

"Of course not. Are you going to tell them?"

"Maybe, but only after I heal Sam. I don't need them to trust me any less right now."

"And you'll take all the precautions?" Castiel looked at her meaningfully.

"I thought my control was perfect?" She answered, arching a brow sarcastically.

"You really ought to show me more respect."

"Yeah? Who died and made you God, Cas? You can bet that it wasn't Raphael. I'd be careful, if I were you."

"I was going to say the same to you," Cas replied, and then vanished.

"Bastard."

...

"Ready to trust me yet?" Kail asked dryly as she entered the living room again.

"Ready to save my brother?" Dean retorted, standing up from where he had just perched on the desk.

"As I'll ever be," Kail threw a glance at Sam, flinching almost imperceptibly. "But I have a price," she said, carefully avoiding Dean's gaze.

"Of course you do," Dean glowered. "Name it, then."

"First, I want you to understand that I can't guarantee anything. Your brother's soul looks like he got caught in a trash compactor and then burnt alive multiple times. He looks like hamburger meat." She looked seriously at both Dean and Bobby.

"Skip to the punchline," Dean growled.

"I could die or lose my sanity while trying to heal him," Kail continued, ignoring Dean. "The only reason that I'm _considering_ helping you is the fact that I, on some level, owe your brother for stopping the apocalypse. That, and I think that you could help me."

"With what?"

"I need you to help me find something. It's not for evil intent, it's just something that I need. I've been looking for it for a long time."

"What is it?"

"I'll tell you if I survive this. Until then, I need you to promise me two things before I help Sam. Firstly, you have to promise that you'll help me find what I'm looking for. Second, if I go crazy from this," She took a deep breath, "I need you to kill me and burn my body as soon as possible. Is that understood?"

Both Bobby and Dean stared at her in surprise. "Look kid, nobody wants to go crazy, but dying over it seems a little extreme," Bobby said gently.

Kail offered no explanation. "Those are my terms." She looked at Dean. "Take them or get yourselves and your brother out of my house." Her expression was smooth, but the anxiety was evident in her eyes.

"Can we have a moment?" Dean asked after a somewhat pregnant pause.

"Sure."Kail exhaled slowly and turned, moving in to the kitchen, out of sight.

"I don't like this," Dean whispered. "You realise that she could ask us to look for something evil? And am I the only one noticing that she's obviously hiding something?"

"It's not like you haven't reneged on a deal before. Plus I'm not seeing too many other options here."

"If I see Cas again, I'm going to rip his friggin' lungs out, God or no God," Dean grumbled.

"So I take it we're saying yes?"

"Was there ever any choice?" With that, Dean made his way to the kitchen, glowering. Kail was standing with her back to him, facing one of the windows. Dean couldn't see her face, but he could tell she wasn't looking outside. Rather, she was looking down at the counter without really seeing it, her pose seeming almost defeated as she leaned on it.

"We'll take your deal, but first I have some questions."

Kail straightened up and turned around, leaning back on the kitchen counter again and giving Dean wry smile. "Of course you do. You can ask while I prepare what I need." She began moving around the kitchen, opening cupboards and taking out various jars and boxes.

"What are you gonna do to my brother?"

Kail held up a large bundle of African Dream Root. "Get in to his head and fix him."

"You're going in to Sam's mind?" Dean's eyes narrowed.

Kail sighed. "That's the best way to heal souls while they're still in a body. I'm guessing you'd like an explanation?"

"You think?"

"And still so rude..." She muttered, opening various jars. While grinding up the Root in a pestle, Kail explained quietly. "When a soul is damaged, it's mostly because of emotional trauma and the damage manifests itself as emotional trauma. Therefore, the best way to access the damage is through the mind. If his soul weren't in its body, I'd be able to reach out and make a connection, no dream root needed. With a body, though, that would be incredibly painful both for me and Sam. The best that I can do is control his dreams in such a way that I could help his soul to move past its own torment and start the healing process."

"So your plan is to go in to his mind and... mess with his dreams?" Dean looked sceptical. "How long have you been doing this exactly?"

If she was insulted by his cynicism, she didn't show it. "I'll be guiding him through the healing process. It won't be perfect but, as far as I can tell, he was never really in perfect condition to begin with, soul-wise." She began mixing other herbs with the dream root using the mortar and pestle. "And I've been doing this since I was about five."

"Who taught you?" Bobby asked, entering the kitchen. Kail seemed un-phased, both by Bobby's sudden appearance and the interrogation that was obviously happening to her.

"No one. I just sort of... did what felt right. At first, we had no idea what was happening to me. It took a lot of research and travelling for my parents to work it out. There were a couple of Shamans that helped out along the way, too."

"Haven't heard of a Shaman stateside in a while," Bobby remarked.

"Who said we were in the states?" Kail gave Bobby a brief smile before answering the question he was about to ask. "We were in Rwanda, mostly. Lots of troubled souls there, both dead and alive. Lots of practice."

"Your parents went all the way to Rwanda to talk to some Shamans and give you some target practice?"

"Nope. They were looking for something else, but mostly they were hunting, like you." Kail didn't like talking about her family. It was clear in the way that her shoulders tensed every time another question was asked.

If Bobby picked up on this subtle cue to shut up, he disregarded it. "You grew up in the life? In Africa?"

"Yep." She kept her back turned to him as she tipped the ground-up ingredients in to a strainer, placing it over the mouth of a chipped mug.

"So what are you doing back here?"

"Days like today make me wonder the same thing," Kail answered tersely, moving to a different kitchen counter, picking up a pen, and scribbling something on a scrap piece of paper. "Can you please get me some of Sam's hair?"

Bobby nodded and left, leaving Kail alone with Dean, who was examining the salt along the window sills of the kitchen.

"Why all the paranoia? It's been a while since I saw security like this."

"It's not obvious? I heal souls. That sort of power attracts all sorts of ghosts and hellspawn. A lot of demons would love to have me working for them, and I'm really not interested. Even worse, agitated spirits get drawn to me and, without the salt barriers, they wait for me all over my house. It's really awkward to find one waiting in my shower or on my bed, so I repel them as much as possible." As she spoke, she set an old copper pot filled with water on the stove to boil.

"But why the fire extinguishers and the sprinkler system?" Dean glanced at the small nozzle above his head.

"Two reasons. First, they're all filled with holy water, and they pack a lot of punch when you hit something with them. Second, I live about twenty miles away from the nearest fire station and I don't like fire much to begin with."

Dean nodded, seeing the logic. His thoughts went back to the photo that he had seen on Kail's desk. He wished that he could figure out what the younger version of Kail reminded him of. "Who were those two people in the photo on your desk?"

She visibly froze at the question, indicating that Dean had un-knowingly brought up the subject of her family again. "My aunt and uncle. I lived with them for a while," she replied stiffly, not elaborating. Dean decided not to push the subject. Thankfully, Bobby returned at that moment with the hair that Kail had requested.

"Great," Kail said briskly. "Let's get started."

...

"Remember when you said we'd pull out if things got too crazy?" Bobby whispered to Dean.

"Yeah."

"This crazy enough for you?"

"Apparently not."

After under an hour of preparation, everything was ready and neither Dean nor Bobby had ever seen such a strange set-up. Incense burned around the room, smelling like cinnamon and apples, which weren't the most mystical of scents to begin with. The fact that the Beatles' White Album was playing certainly didn't make up for this apparent lack of protocol. Then, of course, was the fact that a cot had been set up next to the couch on which Sam lay and Kail was handcuffing herself to it.

"Run this by me again," Bobby said, concern written plainly across his features.

"The scent and the sound help me stay anchored to the physical world, so that I know that whatever I see in Sam's head isn't real." Kail's calmness, which had before concerned Dean, was much deeper now, reaching the serenity that is usually only seen on the faces of complete psychopaths.

"What's with the kinky stuff?" Dean nodded towards the handcuffs.

Kail threw Dean a set of keys. "You can unlock me if I'm not crazy. I'm just trying to give you an easier time."

"And this list of items?" Bobby demanded, waving the piece of paper that Kail had given him. "What do you need celery for?"

"That's my grocery list." Kail looked up at Bobby, an eyebrow quirked. "I'm dropping everything to risk my life for your friend's soul. The least you could do is to help me out with some errands."

This and, more likely, the strangeness of the whole situation, was enough to silence Bobby.

"Are you clear on what you have to do while I'm under?" Kail reached for the dream root tea, which had been steeping for the last half hour. It smelled terrible.

"Keep watch in case anything tries to attack you while you're down, buy your groceries and keep checking your pulse," Dean listed. "In 24 hours, or if your heart stops, we have to wake you and Sam up with this." He waved a hypodermic needle filled with a shot of adrenaline.

"And if I wake up... different?"

"Double-tap you in the head and burn your body. But how will I know?"

"Believe me," she levelled her gaze on him, "you'll know." She moved to take her first sip of tea.

"Wait," Dean said, moving half a step towards her. "Thank you for doing this."

"Thank me if it works," Kail responded, but showed her appreciation by smiling serenely at him.

"And you're pretty sure it'll work?"

"Mostly." Nevertheless, she brought the tea to her lips and gulped it down quickly so that she didn't have to taste too much of it. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Kail was asleep before her head hit the pillow. Dean stared for a moment at her prone figure, realising that this was the first time he had actually seen her being relaxed. Sure, she was pretty calm when she spoke, but it was much more controlled than he'd realised. Seeing her lying there, suddenly looking smaller in her jeans and oversized shirt, made Dean feel much guiltier about the way he had been treating her.

"What do we do now?" Bobby asked, reaching over to remove the empty mug from Kail's slack grip.

Dean heaved a tired sigh, scrubbing a hand over his face. "How do you feel about making a liquor-run while I hold down the fort?"

"I thought you'd never ask."


	2. Chapter 2: Burning Bridges

**Author's Note: **

_Hey there, guys. Just wanted to thank everyone who read last time. It was super exciting refreshing my stats page (I may or may not have done it obsessively) and seeing a bunch of different countries reading my story. _

_This next chapter should contain a bit more action and more background for Kail's character (This will lead to you having more questions about her. Forgive me.) Things should really pick up in the chapter after this one, which I've written as a classic hunting episode. I'll talk to you guys more at the bottom to explain a few things, kay? Enjoy. _

...

Sam woke up first, instantly sitting upright and gasping desperately for air, a hand clutching at his chest, where Dean had injected the adrenaline.

"Sammy? Sam, talk to me." Dean, already at his brother's side, was watching his brother closely for a sign that something had gone wrong. The protective hand that he had placed on his brother's shoulder was also a precautionary one.

"I'm... okay, I think," Sam panted, looking around at his surroundings wildly. "Did Kail make it?"

Dean's eyes reluctantly moved from his brother to Kail, who had just received an adrenaline shot from Bobby. She wasn't moving.

"You're sure you used the right shot?" Dean asked, noting the growing concern on his brother's face.

"Positive," Bobby answered, checking for a pulse. "She's still alive, at any rate."

"Give her another shot," Sam breathed decisively, "She lost a lot of energy helping me. Maybe one shot isn't enough."

Bobby, about to point out that there wasn't another shot, was cut short by Kail, whose mouth was suddenly gasping open in a battle for breath. Eyes still closed, she shot up in to a sitting position, her un-cuffed hand moving towards her mouth as if to usher air in to it.

"Kail? What's going on? What do we do?" Bobby asked as evenly as he could, panic threading its way in to his voice.

"Can't... breathe..." she wheezed through the curtain of hair obscuring her face. "Help?" Suddenly, a loud cracking noise was heard and, under Kail's shirt, Dean could see her spine pulling at her skin, as if it was trying to burst out. Kail, despite not being able to breathe, somehow managed to let out a scream.

Out of habit, Bobby knelt down to her level so that he could look her in the eyes when he asked her what they could do. His words died in his throat. "Dean." Bobby swallowed

Dean, fearing the worst, already had his gun out. Bobby gingerly moved Kail's hair aside to reveal her eyes. They were wide open in panic as she continued to struggle for air. They were also bleeding. More importantly, they were black. Kail slapped Bobby's hand away.

"Don't shoot her!" Sam bellowed, seeing the gun in Dean's hand.

"She made me promise," Dean levelled the gun at her head.

"Not... crazy..." she rasped, apparently having gotten some air in to her lungs, but not much. "Need shot. Top drawer... desk... purple."

After a few moments of panicked fumbling, Bobby pulled a syringe filled with a deep purple liquid out of one of the desk's top drawers.

"Arm," Kail instructed, offering her inner elbow to Bobby.

Bobby jabbed the needle in to the soft skin without hesitation, pushing down the plunger. A few tense seconds followed, in which all three men watched Kail in anticipatory silence. Abruptly, she inhaled deeply, sucking in one lungful of air after another, almost faster than she could exhale them. Her eyes became their normal grey colour once more, though they still appeared to be bleeding.

"I'm okay," she coughed weakly, still breathing heavily and shaking as if her body was recovering from major shock.

"What the hell was that?" Dean demanded, sensing that the immediate danger was past, but not lowering the gun that he had pointed at Kail's head.

"Gratitude. Nice," Kail muttered, wiping at the rivulets of blood down her face and neck and achieving little more than smearing them. "That right there, is what I call luck. I thought I was dead for sure. I had a pretty nasty reaction to Sam's mind, but it looks worse than it is, I think." She took a deep, shuddering breath.

"So the demon eyes, those were just a fun side-effect?"

"Dean," Sam interjected, "leave her alone. She just saved my life, and you're interrogating her?" He reached out and pushed down the gun that Dean held, so that Kail wasn't in the line of fire.

"You're telling me that the eye thing didn't freak you out a little?" Dean allowed Sam to move the gun, but he kept his eyes glued to Kail.

"Of course it did, and the bleeding thing is pretty freaking weird, too, but she's definitely not a demon."

"There's holy water next to the television, if you want to check," Kail gestured vaguely, then moved her hand back to her mouth to cover a cough. When her hand withdrew, there was a smattering of blood across the palm. "Uh-oh."

"We need to get you to a hospital," Bobby said decisively, moving to un-cuff Kail from the bed.

"No hospitals," Kail panted, "It looks creepy, but I should be fine. I just need to sleep." Gently, she stopped Bobby from un-cuffing her, a reassuring, but weak, smile on her face. "That shot should be taking effect any second now, anyway."

Before anyone could open their mouth to ask what the shot was supposed to be doing, Kail slumped forward ungracefully, eyes shut, asleep.

"Oh," Sam said somewhat redundantly.

As Bobby lowered her torso back on to the cot and covered her with a blanket, Dean started inspecting Sam, his gaze shifting warily back to Kail every now and then.

"You're sure you're feeling okay?" Dean checked, his eyes boring in to Sam's as if looking for some trace of hell.

"Uh, yeah. Actually, I'm feeling better than I've felt in a long time," Sam answered, running a hand through his hair. "Except that I'm starving."

Still trying to determine whether Sam was about to melt in to a puddle of insanity, Dean absently handed his brother a slice of pizza from a box on the floor near the couch. "What did she do to you?"

Sam tore in to the pizza, talking through mouthfuls. "I dunno, I was having these crazy dreams that were flashbacks from hell and, out of nowhere, Kail shows up and starts talking to me. I didn't want to talk to her at first, but she just stood there getting tortured right along with me and being nice about it." Sam shook his head, as if he still couldn't believe it, then reached for another slice of pizza. "When I finally started talking to her, I don't know, it was like hell was sort of fading in to the background. By the time I actually shut up again, we weren't even in hell anymore. We were in that field where you and I had set off fireworks when we were kids, remember?"

Dean nodded. "So wait, she just played Dr. Phil and now you're all better?"

Sam shrugged, still chewing. "Yeah, I guess. How long was she in my head?"

"24 hours." Dean passed Sam a bottle of beer.

"Really? Man, I feel like I talked for like a week." Sam accepted the beer gladly, washing down the half-chewed pizza still in his mouth.

"About what?"

"Everything. She just stood there and listened to me for hours. The whole time I talked... I don't know; I could feel myself getting better. Even while my dreams were in hell, when she was talking to me, I had this feeling... like things were going to be okay."

"And are they? I mean, do you remember the cage?"

Sam downed more beer before nodding. "Every last second. I'm just... really well-adjusted about it? I don't know."

"And she didn't try to do anything to you?"

"Like what?"

"I dunno, Sam, like hurt you, or take advantage of the fact that she was in your head?"

"Dude, no. She stood there and burned with me for hours. She didn't complain once, even though she was getting messed up pretty bad." Sam looked over at Kail, who looked horrific with all the blood on her face, which had dripped down in to her hair and over her chest. "I'm glad she made it."

"I'm just happy she fixed you up."

"Dean. A little gratitude, maybe?" Sam shot his brother a reproachful look. "She's just done more for us than most people, and she barely knows us."

Dean exhaled loudly and leaned forward, resting his head in his hands. "I know, Sam. I'm just... tired. This whole week has been freaking crazy, and now we're in this chick's house, talking about how she was your shrink, watching her sleep covered in blood that came out of her demonic eyes, and eating pizza."

Sam snorted humourlessly, still concerned for his brother, and stealing a glance at Bobby, who looked just as fried as Dean. "Get some sleep, you guys. I'll keep an eye on her."

"Nah, Sam, we can't just leave you right after you got your soul fixed. You must be pretty wiped, too," Bobby protested.

"I've been asleep for 24 hours. That's more than I'm used to getting in like a month," Sam pointed out, grabbing a fourth slice of pizza. "You guys look like crap, anyway. Go get some rest."

"You sure?"

Sam knew his brother was just waiting for an excuse not to sleep, being as over-protective as he was. Sam also knew that he wasn't going to stop Dean sleeping after everything that he'd just gone through. "Damn sure. Go to sleep."

"And you're sure you'll be fine?" Bobby asked as he and Dean stood up, stretching a little. They were already heading to a spare bedroom that Kail had pointed out to them earlier.

"For the first time in a long time."

...

It was the sunlight that eventually woke Kail up. She made quiet, waking-up noises, scrunching her eyes against the light. With some effort but a distinct lack of will, she opened her eyes, inwardly wincing at how difficult it was due to the crusted blood on her eyelashes. Gross. Her vision was blurry at first and, with her un-cuffed hand, she rubbed at her eyes and face, propping herself up on one elbow. Someone had cleaned the blood off of her face and neck.

When her vision cleared, she could see her living room, flooded with sunlight, and Dean standing by the window, having apparently just opened the curtains. "Hey," He said tonelessly, grabbing the keys to the cuffs off of Kail's desk.

"Hey," she answered, still blinking away sleep. She offered her cuffed wrist to Dean.

"How're you feeling?" He still wasn't looking her in the eyes as he knelt down to unlock the cuffs. They sprang open and Kail pulled her hand towards herself, rubbing the wrist gently.

"Thirsty," she replied shakily, shifting away from Dean. Wordlessly, Dean handed her a glass of water that was on the floor next to the cot. "Thanks." Kail downed the water faster than seemed humanly possible, then glanced down at the empty glass. "This holy water?"

"Yeah," Dean admitted, not looking too ashamed about it.

Kail cast around, spotting two cuts on her forearm. "I'm going to guess these would be from a silver knife and pure iron," she said, pointing. Dean didn't argue. "And, judging by the fact that I'm still alive, I must've passed all of your tests."

Dean seemed a bit more reluctant about agreeing to this one. "Yes," he answered finally, through gritted teeth.

"Well you must feel a little silly now," she smiled wryly. "It's okay, though. I would've done the same thing."

Dean didn't say anything.

"How's Sam doing?" she asked, changing the subject to show that she wasn't going to hold this over his head.

"He's sleeping now, but he's good. Really good, actually." Dean paused a moment before continuing, looking up at her from his kneeling position. "Thank you for helping him. I was a dick to you and you didn't deserve it. I'm sorry." The sincerity was evident in his expression, along with the pain that this apology caused his ego, making Kail smile tiredly.

She shook her head, attempting to push her fingers through her hair and grimacing as they were all caught in knots and matted blood. "Don't worry about it. I get it. He's your little brother and, after the whole Cas thing, I wouldn't be trusting anyone, especially someone with weird eyes."

"I still shouldn't have been like that," Dean insisted, moving to sit next to her. Kail flinched away, drawing confusion from Dean's eyes. "I won't bite," he said lightly.

"No, it's not that," Kail said quickly. "It's just that, I feel really gross and hungry and I generally don't like being near people when I'm like that." As she spoke she attempted to stand up, failing miserably.

Dean caught her before her knees hit the ground, his arm supporting her around her waist. A whimper tore itself from Kail's throat and she tried to pull away from him.

"Thanks for, uhm, catching me, but I'm good. I think I can make it to my room. Somehow." She sounded out of breath, and her movements were lurching ones.

"You can't even make it to the door. C'mon, I'll help you up the stairs, at least." Without waiting for an answer, Dean moved a little, so her arm was over his shoulders. Kail looked physically pained as he did, pursing her lips and squeezing her eyes shut. "You hurt?" He asked, catching her expression.

"No, I'm okay. I just... don't like being so physically close to people," she said through gritted teeth.

Dean started walking her forwards slowly, supporting the majority of her weight, since her legs clearly couldn't. "You don't like asking for help much, huh?"

"You could say that," Kail breathed as they reached the stairs. Dean practically had to lift her to get her up each step, but he could tell that she was really trying to help out. He was going to mention something about how easy she was to carry, because she was so light (girls like being told stuff like that, right?), but then decided against it. She didn't seem like the type to fall for flattery much. Not only that, but he somehow doubted that that would make her feel any better.

"So helping Sam really messed you up," Dean stated instead, guilt in his voice. He had asked Kail for help, ignoring all of her warnings about the consequences. Even worse, she'd agreed to do it and he had still tried to shoot her.

"It could have been worse," she panted. "The only reason I'm not doing so well now is because I've been sleeping for so long." She paused for breath. "How long was I out, by the way?"

"About twelve hours." Dean lifted her up the final step, allowing Kail to weakly steer him in the direction of a door at the end of the hallway.

"No wonder."

They reached what must have been the door to Kail's bedroom and stopped. "I think I can make it from here," she told Dean, removing her arm from around his shoulders and latching on to the doorframe. Despite the difficulty of this movement, Dean could see relief show itself in her slightly less tense shoulders.

"You sure?" Dean asked, still wondering if it was him who had made her uncomfortable, of if she was really just like that in general.

"Unless you plan on trying to help me in to the shower, I'd say I'm sure."

Dean considered for a millisecond. From what he'd seen of Kail, it wouldn't be a bad show. On the other hand, she looked like she'd probably injure him if he even tried watched her shower. "I'm good," Dean said "but, if you need anything..."

Kail snorted, gingerly moving in to her room before shutting the door behind her.

Glad to finally be alone, Kail sighed and sagged against her door. So close. With some effort, she launched herself from the door to her bedside table, grabbing a couple of different bottles of pills and tipping the majority of them down her throat.

"Now that I can shower without wanting to rip someone's throat out..." Kail muttered, grabbing a towel from her dresser, and stumbling to her shower.

...

About half an hour later, Sam, Bobby and Dean were seated around Kail's kitchen table, sleepily clutching beers and eating cold take-out.

"Still can't believe you're better, Sammy." Dean shook his head.

"Is it just me, or does it seem like that was too easy?" Bobby asked, reaching up under his cap and scratching his head.

"It's not just you," Dean confirmed, taking a swig of beer. "But remember, we still have to help her find whatever it is she's looking for, and I'm gonna go ahead and guess that it's not Mr. Right."

"And let's not forget all the nasties that she'll attract while y'all are on the road," Bobby added.

"She's hardly the damsel in distress type, though," Sam pointed out, grabbing a French fry from the centre of the kitchen table. "She'll know how to keep them away. Anyway, it's the least we could do, considering." He chewed thoughtfully a moment. "Actually, this is probably one of the better debts that we've been in."

"I wouldn't be so sure, yet," Bobby grunted.

Dean was about to say something when Kail walked in to the kitchen, her gait much smoother than it had been earlier, but still a little precarious. She looked miles better than she had half an hour ago, though. Her still-wet hair had been pulled back in to a messy ponytail, with damp strands curling around her face and neck. The ponytail revealed that she actually had a pretty, sharp face with high cheekbones and expressive, grey eyes. She had exchanged the blood-stained, over-sized t-shirt and jeans for a crimson, loose tank-top and a darker, tighter pair of jeans. For one testosterone-fuelled moment, Dean wondered how he had managed to be so rude to her before.

"I thought that you guys would be gone by now," Kail stated blankly, apparently oblivious to the looks she was getting. As she spoke, she made her way over to the fridge, making a pleased sound as she saw the fresh groceries inside it. Her movements were still slightly lurching, as though she was trying to accomplish things quickly before her actions became too shaky.

Sam was the first to speak. "We thought you wanted help finding... that thing that you're looking for." It was a miracle that Sam managed to choke out that sentence as Kail bent over to reach something on the bottom shelf of the fridge.

"Yeah, but I didn't know whether or not you guys would actually make good on your deal." There was a pause. "Also, it's rude to stare."

Sheepishly, all three returned their gaze down to their beers, Bobby being the first one to speak again. "You thought we'd up and leave after you almost died helping Sam?" He sounded incredulous.

"It wouldn't be the first time someone bailed on me," Kail said dryly, dumping a bunch of ingredients on the kitchen counter, her back still turned to them.

"Nice tattoo," Dean said, clearly less ashamed of his staring than Bobby or Sam, gesturing to the mark on Kail's shoulder blade."Looks familiar." At this, Sam looked up from the hole that his gaze had been burning in to the table. He smirked a little when he saw what Dean was looking at.

Kail turned around, looking confused and self-consciously reaching a hand back to touch her tattoo. "What do you mean?"

Wordlessly, Sam and Dean pulled down the collars of their shirts, revealing tattoos identical to the one on Kail's back. Kail grinned. It was a new expression on her, but a pleasant one. "Great minds think alike, I guess. When did you guys get yours?"

"A couple of years back. You?" Sam replied, readjusting his shirt.

Kail had turned her back to them again and was chopping up vegetables. She paused for a moment to think. "Must've been when I was about... thirteen?" She went back to cutting.

Sam felt his jaw drop and saw Dean and Bobby's doing the same. "You got that when you were thirteen?"

"You think that's impressive, you should see the ones I got when I was fifteen." She glanced back a moment to see that all three of them still looked shocked. "My parents knew that things would be dangerous for someone like me, so they took precautions. I asked them to," she explained, still chopping.

"So... where are these other tattoos?" Dean asked, ignoring the exasperated looks that he got from Sam and Bobby. What could he say? Just because he didn't trust Kail as far as he could throw her, it didn't mean that he couldn't appreciate her a little.

Kail laughed. "Nowhere exciting. Mostly my back. You wanna see?"

"Sure," Dean said, winking at Sam, who just shook his head at his brother. Dean noticed that, despite their chivalrous disapproval, neither Sam nor Bobby were making any objections.

Kail shrugged, putting down her chopping knife and, with a sigh, reached around to lift up her shirt, revealing her lower and middle back.

Lines of script ran across it, some horizontally, others vertically. They weren't all in the same language or alphabet, but they all stayed within the lines of a circle with a round Celtic shield knot at its centre. The tattoo gave the impression that all of the scripts were somehow joined by the knot in the middle, but not in a way that was immediately obvious. It was a dizzyingly complex tattoo, but beautiful to look at. "There's some Egyptian script there, your basic Japanese, some Latin, a bit of Sanskrit, N'ko and, my favourite, Cuneiform."

"What do they say?" Bobby asked, genuinely interested in the languages on the tattoo rather than its location.

Kail lowered her shirt. "Protection spells, charms to repel spirits and demons, things like that. We had to research the hell out of it, though. I mean, getting accurate translations alone was a complete nightmare."

"I'll bet," Bobby said appreciatively. "Isn't all of that kind of overkill, though?"

Kail started throwing her chopped ingredients in to a bowl. "Probably, but ghosts literally can't come within like a meter radius of me unless I let them and Demons can't even find me. It also looks pretty awesome, doesn't it?"

"Definitely," Sam and Dean chorused, drawing a snort from Kail and an impressive eye-roll from Bobby.

"Before these two start drooling on your table, can I ask what it is we're supposed to be helping you look for, exactly?" Bobby shot a pointed look at Sam and Dean, as if wondering why they hadn't posed the same question sooner, before they let their hormones take over their minds.

Kail turned around, a big bowl of salad in one hand, and some piled plates in the other. She carefully made her way over to the kitchen table and sat down, placing the salad bowl down in front of her. "I wasn't sure if you guys wanted any, so I just made a lot," She said, spooning some salad on to a plate for herself. She took a deep breath, looking at her salad before answering Bobby's question. "I'm looking for the Grace of God."

There was silence. Bobby, Dean and Sam exchanged looks, all of them trying to determine whether or not Kail was being serious.

"Isn't there a bible group for that, or something?" Dean asked finally. Mr Tact, that was Dean.

Kail raised an eyebrow. "I don't mean the ask-and-you-shall-receive Grace of God; I mean an actual piece of God's Grace. The story goes that a piece of it fell to earth when God created man and that it's still here somewhere."

Kail's guests sat a while, silently taking the information in. Sam helped himself to some salad and Kail was already halfway through her first plateful.

"Why do you want to find it?" Bobby's question seemed to jolt Kail out of deep thought and, as she looked up from her salad, she gave Bobby an almost startled look.

"It's really powerful. I mean, it's this tiny sliver, but it's still, you know, _God's_, so it can do a lot." She paused before continuing. "Legend has it that it can heal anything."

"You mean like perform a miracle?" Sam inquired.

Kail nodded. "Exactly. It's pure creation, so it can fix literally anything in creation."

"And what is it that you want fixed?" Dean was regarding Kail seriously now, all of the impishness lost from his expression.

"If you don't mind, I'd rather keep that one to myself," Kail replied, swallowing. "It's not like I can do any harm with it, anyway."

"Yeah, because a civilian with a source of immense power has never gone wrong," Dean pointed out sarcastically.

Kail's expression as she returned Dean's gaze was a mixture of exasperation and annoyance. "Look, I've done everything that you've asked me to do, almost dying in the process, I've let you in to my house, where you've been staying for the past few days, filling it with your gross man-stench and beer, and all I'm asking is that you help me search for something that has absolutely nothing to do with you." Her tone was measured, but there were clear flashes of anger in her eyes. Once she was done talking, she took a deep breath, closing her eyes and exhaling slowly. There was no point in getting upset. "I'm not asking you to trust me. I just need your help. Please."

Before Dean or anyone else could speak, there was a knock from Kail's front door. Instinctively, every person at the table reached for the nearest weapon. "You expecting company?" Dean asked quietly, his hand closing around the handle of his pistol.

Kail shook her head, leaning over and pulling a knife out of one of her boots. "Stay here," she ordered, standing up and keeping the knife in a reverse-grip. After trading a few brief, half-mouthed words with Dean, Sam ignored Kail's order and stood up with her, sawed-off shotgun in hand. Kail gave him a look that clearly stated that she didn't want help, but she didn't try to stop him from following her to the door. Another knock, this one more insistent, echoed around the house.

With all of the muscles in her back tensed, Kail peeked through the door's peephole, her eyes flashing blue. Exhaling slowly, despite her racing heart, she turned around and mouthed "Demon" to Sam, followed by a finger moving to her lips to signal that he should stay quiet.

"Little pig, little pig, let me come in..." a male voice taunted through the door, causing Kail to visibly flinch, but tighten her grip on the knife. She backed away from the door, signalling Sam to do the same. "Or I'll huff and I'll puff..." the voice had an edge of laughter in it that set Sam's teeth on edge. Dean and Bobby, noting Kail's reaction to the situation, had moved to flank Kail and Sam, both of them aiming their respective guns at the door. "And I'll BLOW your house in!" At the word blow, the door was kicked down with such force that it splintered the floor as it went down.

A tall, middle-aged man stood in the doorway, a genial smile on his pleasantly aged, dark features. His black hair was attractively peppered with white and, although he carried a bit of weight, he wore it well. He would have looked downright charming if it hadn't been for the impossibly crazy grin splitting his face.

"Kail! Imagine meeting you here!" he beamed, as though he had been strolling in the park before happening upon her. As he spoke, he pulled out a .45 of his own and shot upwards, marring the devil's trap that Kail had painted above the door without even looking up. He stepped across her threshold, looking quite amused at the guns being pointed at him. "What are you planning on doing with those, gentlemen?" He threw his own gun to the side in disgust. "I _deplore_ fighting with these things, to be honest."

"Jabari." The demon's gaze centred on Kail as she spoke, a creepy smile returning to his features.

"So you remember me." He looked thrilled. "We met such a long time ago; I was worried that you wouldn't recognise me."

"You know him?" Sam muttered out of the corner of his mouth, eyes not leaving the demon in front of them, who wasn't advancing any closer.

"I sent him back to hell when I was sixteen," Kail answered expressionlessly, "in Somalia. How'd you find me?" Although her face was smooth, the tension in her back and shoulders was noticeable, and a barely-concealed anger threaded itself in to her voice whenever she addressed the demon.

"I did some soul-searching while I was in hell. A couple of the souls that you healed up enough to get reaped were more than happy to give me a location. They're like little pissed-off compasses, those souls. Thank goodness, too, or I would never have found you as long as you had that silly tattoo." Jabari had his hands folded behind his back as he took another step in to the house, examining his surroundings with the curiosity of a museum visitor. "It's so nice to see that you've done so well for yourself, considering that whole debacle in Rwanda with your brother."

"Shut up about him." Although Kail didn't shout, the fury was evident in her eyes. "What the hell do you want, Jabari? I'm not exactly your type anymore."

Jabari's gaze, which had been on a landscape painting on the wall, turned to Kail innocently. "You think I came all the way to this ridiculous country for _that_? No, no, my dear. I've moved on from that. I'm on to bigger and better things now." His smile started to widen to disturbing proportions. "Ask me what. Go on."

Kail regarded him for a few moments, her eyes reflecting anger, disgust and, to Dean's surprise, fear. "What?" she obliged finally, her fists clenching.

His grin almost split his face in half. It was obscene, but the smile just kept growing. "Bounty hunting." His impossibly stretched lips wrapped themselves around the words, savouring them as he pushed them out of his overgrown mouth. He paused a few moments to let the words sink in, and then attacked.

The action took place so quickly that nobody had time to react. One moment, Jabari was standing there, creeping everyone out and, the next, he was much closer to the group than before, reaching for Kail's throat. On sheer instinct, Kail ducked the demon's hand, swiping her knife in an upwards arc. She managed to lacerate the demon's arm, then brought her knife hand back to punch him in the face. He reeled backwards, his face contorted with laughter. "This little wasp still has some sting!" he chuckled, reaching up to feel his broken nose.

Not bothering to respond to his comment, Kail started speaking quietly to the three men behind her. "One of you run to the kitchen. Under the counter near the stove, there's a green switch. Flip it. Go." Before she could elaborate, Jabari came in for round two, his movements eerily fast. He went low, aiming for Kail's stomach. Bobby, who was next to her, reversed his grip on the rifle in his hands and rammed the butt of the gun in to the back of the demon's neck with as much force as he could muster. This barely slowed Jabari down, but it gave Kail enough time to position herself so that she could grab the demon's wrist and pull it, using his momentum against him, and sending him to the floor.

Dean, who had been closest to the kitchen, was sprinting as fast as he could around and over Kail's furniture to reach the stove. "Green switch, green switch, green..." he murmured to himself in panic as he kneeled down so that he could see under the counter. Where gas lines for the stove should have been was what appeared to be a circuit board with various coloured switches, each one labelled with things like "in case of skinwalkers." On the far left, there was a green switch labelled "Fire/Demons." Grinning, Dean flipped it.

Meanwhile, Jabari had been momentarily detained in a hold performed by Sam, who had pounced on him the moment he hit the ground. However, Jabari had somehow managed to overturn it, so that Sam was underneath him. An ugly scowl twisted his face as he glared down at the Winchester, his hand closing around Sam's throat. He opened his cavernous mouth to say something but, before he could, the sprinklers in Kail's house went on, spraying jets of holy water down throughout the house. The demon reared back, a hissing, keening shriek tearing itself from his throat. Taking advantage of this, Kail grabbed the nearest chair and smashed it over Jabari's head with a savage cry. His skin still smoking, the demon slumped forward on to Sam, apparently unconscious.

A silence ensued, the only sound being the pattering of water from the sprinklers overhead. Kail was panting, still holding remnants of the chair in both hands. Eventually Sam, who had managed to get his breath back, spoke. "Worst. Shower. Ever."

...

Once Jabari was safely tied up inside a devil's trap in Kail's living room, Kail collapsed on to her soggy couch, ignoring the squelching sounds it made. Her head hung in her hands as she kneaded her eyes, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

Dean was, apparently, trying to do the same thing. "Remind me. Who is this guy exactly?" he was pacing back and forth, eyes not leaving the demon's slumped form.

"His name is Jabari. My family hunted him back when we spent some time in Somalia. He's pretty low-level, easy to track because of his obvious MO. I sent him back to hell with a basic exorcism and that was that." Kail stated the facts tiredly, her head still in her hands.

"What was his MO? Demons aren't usually so obvious." Sam, who was leaning up against Kail's desk, at least tried to be compassionate by keeping his voice low.

Kail paused before she answered, moving her hands away from her eyes but still staring at the ground. "He had a thing for virgins," she said quietly, distaste evident in her voice. She didn't elaborate and Sam, Dean and Bobby all figured that they were probably better off not knowing much more than that anyway.

"And now he's bounty hunting you? Do you know who put the price on your head?"

"Yeah, because if I knew that, I'd still be sitting around like an idiot," Kail snapped, then sighed, realising that she needed to calm down a bit. She ran a hand through her wet hair and breathed in deeply. "Like I said, a lot of pretty awful things want to get a hold of my gift. I can't really keep track of them." She sounded calmer, but it was evident that it took a lot of effort for her to sound that way. "Can someone please bandage that arm?" She pointed to the blood dripping from Jabari's fingers, trickling from the wound that she had given him during the fight. "We don't want his meatsuit bleeding out," she explained in response to the questioning looks she got.

Sam shrugged and grabbed a roll of bandages off the desk, wrapping them around Jabari's arm tightly.

When Sam was done, Bobby uncapped a flask of holy water. "Let's find out who's after you, shall we?" With that, he poured some holy water over Jabari's head

The demon awoke with a hiss, eyes black against the pain. They watched in silence as Jabari recovered, skin still steaming, and realised what situation he was in, with the devil's trap painted around him and his limbs bound to a sturdy chair. Eventually his gaze found Kail, and stayed on her. She lifted the corner of her mouth in a cold smile.

"Isn't this familiar?" she asked, twirling her knife slowly in one hand.

"If I recall, last time you weren't quite so cocky," Jabari observed, tugging at his restraints to test their strength. They were pretty darn strong.

Kail shrugged. "Last time you weren't so easy to catch. You're getting slow, Jabari. Is your puppet-master curbing your powers?"

Jabari ignored her question. "Maybe you've just gotten stronger. You're about the right age now, aren't you?" He paused, enjoying the way Kail's expression darkened as he spoke.

"Shut up," she warned.

"Yes..." He stretched the word out, luxuriating in it, "your brother was about twenty-two when it happened, right?"

Without warning, Kail reached out and slapped the demon across the face hard, making his head snap dangerously far to one side of his neck. The sound of the slap echoed around the room, but Kail appeared as though it hadn't cost her much effort. If her hand was stinging, she didn't react to it. Her only current action was breathing more heavily, as if barely keeping the lid on the rage bubbling up inside her. "Mention him one more time," she dared the demon, a muscle in her neck twitching.

Sam, Dean and Bobby exchanged surprised glances. No one had expected Kail to act out like that, but it made it quite clear that she was losing her cool. Sam placed a hand on her shoulder. "Maybe we should take over for while?"

Kail started at the feeling of Sam's hand, looking like she was about to knock it away, but stopping herself. After a few brief seconds in which she appeared to be about to argue with Sam, she nodded tersely, standing up and moving to the other side of the room, arms crossed.

Head still twisted to the side, Jabari chuckled. Slowly, he turned his head to look at Sam, the vertebrae in his neck making popping sounds as he did. He didn't say anything, his eyes just bored in to Sam's as he continued laughing, his face stretching obscenely.

"Who sent you?" Dean demanded, cutting to the chase.

"None of your beeswax," Jabari responded, giggling. The sound was cut short as Bobby threw more holy water on the demon, causing him to cry out.

"Try again," Dean ordered, pacing back in forth in front of the Demon, his face expressionless. He still didn't like torture in any shape or form. It reminded him too much of hell, but he knew that, at times like this, it was unfortunately necessary. He just hated the memories that it brought.

"I don't know his name," Jabari gasped, somehow still grinning. Bobby didn't waste time in hurling more holy water at the demon. All of the room's occupants, after long years on the job, held objective poses in response to the demon's keening screams intermingled with mad laughter. Sympathy for demons had long since been washed out of their systems.

"Pull the other one," Sam said sarcastically. Before the demon could speak, more holy water was thrown on to him for good measure, as a warning of what would happen if he lied again.

"Stop! Stop it! No more!" Jabari panted, the smile gone from his face, his skin smoking.

"You'll talk?" Sam stepped forward with his own flask of holy water, brandishing it threateningly.

"Yes! Yes, alright. Just no more, okay? It's not like knowing who it is will do you much good, anyway." The demon flinched away as best as he could. "His name is Marius. He's been wanting a little reunion with Kail."

Everybody's gaze shifted to Kail, whose eyes had widened at the mention of Marius. "Old friend?" Dean asked.

Kail swallowed. "You could say that."

"I imagine that Kail's quite keen on seeing him, after how they parted ways last time," Jabari gloated, enjoying Kail's discomfort immensely.

Dean raised a questioning eyebrow at Kail, who was wearing the expression that she always assumed when forced to discuss her family. "He killed my aunt and uncle. I hunted him down and sent him back to hell."

"But there was more than that, wasn't there?" Jabari taunted, cackling to himself.

"Shut your mouth before I shut it for you."Kail's voice was strained with the effort of not shouting. "What the hell does he want with me, anyway? I somehow doubt he wants to look through old photo albums together."

"He wants to take on Crowley, and he needs whole souls to make himself big and strong."

"He wants Kail to heal souls before he uses them?" Sam clarified.

"Of course. She's the strongest out there. He's tried using Shamans and other people with her gift, but no one can handle a soul from hell quite like she can." Jabari twisted around to leer at her. "Such good control."

Kail returned his gaze steadily, apparently having regained her composure. "So he sent _you_?" she asked incredulously. "Most hunters don't even get out of bed for demons as pathetic as you, and he thought you could take me?"

Jabari grinned. "Oh, sweetheart, I'm not the snatcher. I'm just a scout. _Just wait_ until you see the snatcher." He started laughing again, crazier than before.

"I think we've heard enough," Kail said, shooting quick looks at Sam, Dean and Bobby for confirmation. They nodded. "_Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus_," she began intoning, smirking a little at the panic on Jabari's face.

"No! No! Do you know what they'll do to me in hell?" he cried, squirming around in his restraints.

"I'm counting on it," Kail replied. "_omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii,_  
><em>omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica<em>_._"

"He's going to come for you, Kail!" he screamed, "he's going to snatch you and play with you."

"_Ergo, __draco maledicte._ _Ecclesiam tuam securi tibi facias libertate servire__,_" Kail continued, ignoring the demon's threats.

"MARIUS NEVER SAID TO BRING YOU BACK IN ONE PIECE," the demon shrieked, his body convulsing.

"_te rogamus, audi nos_," Kail finished, her expression satisfied as black smoke poured from Jabari's mouth, then was sucked down through the floor, leaving a charred mark.

Kail took a step forward, pressing her fingers against the neck of Jabari's limp meatsuit, feeling for a pulse. "Dammit," she murmured a few moments later. As when Jabari had been knocked unconscious, there was a momentary silence. The set of Kail's shoulders and the look on her face indicated clearly that she didn't want to talk about Marius anymore.

"So what do we do now?" Sam asked, finally breaking the silence and looking around at everyone.

"It depends," Kail responded first. "Are you going to help me find what I'm looking for or not?"

"What happens if we will?" As he spoke, Dean noted the weariness on Kail's features. He remembered that, about two hours ago, she hadn't even been able to walk, never mind fight and exorcise a demon while learning about a price on her head.

"Well, I obviously can't stay here," she glanced darkly at her surroundings. "If you're going to help me, I'll head off with you. If not, I guess I'll go it on my own."

"Can we have a moment?" Sam requested, seeing that Dean clearly had his dilemma face on.

Kail sighed. "Sure. I need to go pack my stuff, anyway. Come get me when you're done." She turned and made her way up the stairs, her movements a little sluggish. They watched her go and, the moment she was out of sight, Sam rounded on his brother.

"Dean, tell me you're not considering letting her go off on her own."

Dean sighed, "I dunno, Sam. I mean, looking at her now, she looks like a lost puppy in the rain, but you saw how she handled herself, man. She'd be fine."

"Dean! After everything she's done for us, after we promised her-"

"I know, Sam, I know. But she's clearly hiding something from us, and I don't like it."

"What, so she's not allowed to have secrets now?"

"Helping someone without full disclosure never works out well for us, Sam. I don't know if you've noticed."

"So what, we're just going to break our promise and leave her alone even though there's a demon that's put a hit out on her?"

"Dean, I see your point here but, even I've gotta say, it's a pretty crap move," Bobby pointed out, earning a tired glare from Dean.

"Yeah, I can see that. It's just, do we really trust her enough to take her on the road with us? I mean, her past looks even shadier than ours. We don't know if she'll try to pull something."

"Look at it this way," Bobby suggested. "She's trusting you enough to want to go on the road with you, despite what an ass you've been to her."

"The least we could do is give her a chance," Sam added.

Dean observed both of them for a minute, clearly considering all the options and finding none of them to his liking. "Fine. But if we wake up to our throats being slit, that's on you."

...

"So wait, you're not driving in the Impala with us?" Sam asked, raising an eyebrow as Kail threw her medium-sized duffle bag in to the trunk of the car, next to Sam and Dean's. Her ability to pack lightly didn't go unappreciated. Dean had already decided that, promise or not, he wasn't toting around an entire wardrobe, not in his car.

Kail looked up at both Sam and Dean as though she had thought they would assume as much. "You really think that I want to spend my days stuck in a car with you two?"

Dean shrugged slightly. While he knew that he definitely didn't want to have Kail with them in the Impala all day, he hadn't thought that the feeling would be mutual. "So then what are you gonna drive?"

A grin spread over Kail's face that Dean hadn't seen before. It was excitement intermingled with pleasure, and, on Kail, it looked almost impish. It was adorable. "The pants didn't give it away? And the fact that I'm using your trunk space?"

Neither Sam nor Dean passed up the opportunity to look down at Kail's pants, which were black, leathery, and looked as though she had been poured in to them. On closer inspection that didn't involve following the curve of Kail's legs, there was padding on the inside of her thighs and calves, as well as on her knees, just above where her boots ended. "You're driving a motorbike," Dean concluded triumphantly.

"Well done," Kail said without condescension. "Just let me get her and we can get going."

Earlier, they had decided to head west after dropping Bobby off at home, since Kail had just gotten a lead saying that the Grace was somewhere out that way. The way she had described it was that the Grace was constantly migrating and, wherever it went, it would leave signs. It had taken years for her family to zero in on the different types of signs, and even longer to track them properly, but Kail was reasonably sure that she had the pattern down, even though she still couldn't understand why it was in the States, of all places. At the moment, with the sudden price on Kail's head, the main priority was getting the hell away from her house.

Figuring that she couldn't burn the whole house down, she had burned most of the paper and books that she felt she didn't need, and let Bobby take some of them home with him. Anything that she thought might be able to let anyone work out her whereabouts had also been burned. Smoke was still rising from behind the house as Kail emerged from the shed alongside, wheeling out a bike next to her. It was cherry-red, with black trimmings and an impressively-sized storage box mounted on the end. It was by no means a girly bike, and it looked like it meant business.

Dean whistled. "Damn, which make is that?"

"Honda Veradero 125," Kail replied, looking down at the bike affectionately. "Nothing fancy, but she gets me to where I'm going." As she talked, she leaned the bike on its kickstand and shrugged in to a slightly oversized biking jacket, zipping it up high on her neck.

"I'll bet," Bobby said, eyeing the bike admiringly.

Sam, Dean and Bobby began climbing in to the Impala at the same time that Kail threw one leg over the bike to straddle it. "What're you listening to?" Sam asked as Kail put on her helmet and began messing with an ipod that was attached to it.

"The only thing you can listen to when you're wanted by a demon and you're about to speed down the highway on your sexy motorbike: AC/DC." Kail's response was muffled by the helmet, but she still sounded like she was enjoying herself. With this statement, she turned the ignition on her bike and it purred to life, growling louder as she sped off, not bothering to check if the impala was following her.

"Dean, I know you don't really trust her and all..." Sam started, as Dean reversed away from Kail's house.

Dean cut in before his brother could finish. "But she's pretty awesome. Yeah, yeah, I know."

...

_Okay, so I just want to nip a couple of things in the bud._

_Firstly, you might ask: "Simone, why did Kail inspect the guys with her creepy eyes when they could see her, as opposed to what she did with Jabari, where she just checked him out through the keyhole?"_

_To that, observant and logical reader, I would answer that Kail did, indeed, look at the boys through the keyhole before she opened the door, just to make sure that they weren't demons. The reason she did the eye-thing a second time was because she was being upfront with the gentlemen. Think about it: would Dean really have trusted her any more if she had let three strong men enter her house without showing some sort of suspicion?_

_Secondly, you'll notice that the details surrounding the Grace are rather vague and iffy at best. They're meant to be. Move along. _

_Please do review if you have the time. They make me happy inside, like chocolate, but with less calories. The next update should be in about a week, so keep an eye out. _


	3. Chapter 3: Something in the Water

**Author's Note**

_Hey everyone. Not a whole lot to say here. Just, basically, thanks for reading so far. I really do appreciate it. _

_We'll talk more at the end of the chapter, yes? Yes._

...

"Rise and shine, princess."

"Bite me," Kail groaned, rolling over and trying to bury herself deeper in her sleeping bag. The morning air was still frosty, and Kail had absolutely no desire to step out in to it. Sam and Dean, who were now standing over her, had tried to talk her in to sleeping in the car, where it was at least warmer, but Kail had refused on the grounds that it was too cramped and, with the two of them in there, it smelled bad. They couldn't really argue with that.

Despite the lack of appeal that the open air had, Kail heaved a sigh and emerged from her sleeping bag, fully clothed. She stretched, ignoring the aches and pains that come from sleeping on cold ground after ten hours of driving a motorbike almost non-stop. "Breakfast?" She posed, yawning and bending down to roll up her sleeping bag.

"There's a gas station twenty miles from here. Sound good?" Dean also sounded a little groggy, but the chillness of the morning air had woken him a lot faster than it had Kail. He supposed he couldn't blame her, though. After everything that had happened in the last 24 hours, he was surprised that she had even woken up.

"At this point, I'd eat road-kill," Kail responded, shouldering the backpack that contained her sleeping bag and other essentials (gun, knife, holy water, flashlight, etc.) and running her fingers through her hair before tying it back. Her movements were still a little creaky, but her entire demeanour changed as something caught her attention in the field next to which they'd been sleeping. Kail's eyes flashed blue for a moment as she investigated. "Dammit," she muttered, her eyes turning grey again. "Now? Really?"

"What is it?" Dean demanded, freezing where he was. He had been about to re-enter the impala, desperate for the warmth of its heater in the chill air.

Kail sighed and dropped her backpack to the ground again, not taking her gaze from a spot on the field. She looked annoyed. "A soul found me. It needs to be healed. Give me a moment." She started making her way over to the spot where the soul apparently stood, her boots crunching in the frosty grass. All the while, as she walked, she was mumbling sleepily to herself about "just _one_ decent night's sleep" and "can't go _anywhere_ without being found."

She approached the spot in the field, which looked empty to Sam and Dean, her eyes back to blue again. She spoke tiredly to the soul, in a voice too low for the brothers to hear from where they were. She paused to listen for a moment before nodding and extending a hand towards the soul. A pulsating, white light blossomed from her fingertips, and her eyes grew an even brighter shade of blue. The air around her and the brothers grew very still, and even the early-morning sounds of birds and rustling wind faded away. It felt as though the surrounding area had been closed off in a bubble of serene, pure silence. Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. The birds could be heard again, and the wind picked up. Kail's hand dropped back to her side and her eyes faded back to their normal hue. She stretched, arching her back and cracking her neck, then made her way back to Sam and Dean, still looking annoyed.

"What?" she asked, noticing the way they were staring at her.

"That was amazing," Sam breathed honestly, earning an eye-roll from Dean who, though impressed, wasn't about to go gushing about it to Kail. She shrugged modestly, picking her backpack up again.

"What happens to those souls after you heal them?" Dean decided to ask instead of complimenting her.

Kail was either too tired or too indifferent to be concerned by Dean's lack of appreciation. "They get reaped. A lot of the angry spirits that we hunt are only around because they were too broken to get reaped. I help them along. Some of them end up in hell, which pisses them off a little. Hence, how Jabari managed to convince them to tell him where I was." As she spoke, she swung her leg over her bike to straddle it.

"Then aren't you worried about that soul doing the same thing?"

Kail shook her head. "That one? Nah. Hit-and-run victim. She was a good person before she died, but dying right before her wedding made her pretty angry about the whole deal. Pretty angry, but not vengeful. She's free to go to heaven now." Kail gave a small smile, showing that, despite her irritation at having had to heal the spirit at this early hour, she was pleased to have done it.

"So wait." Dean hadn't moved from where he was standing. "You're saying that, if you find a haunted house, you don't have to burn the bones or anything? You just have to lay your hands on them?"

"Sometimes," Kail answered. "Other times, they're a little too violent, and I can't get close enough to heal them without them trying to off me."

"Then you burn the bones?"

"Then I burn the bones," Kail confirmed, turning on her motorbike. "Can we get a move on now? I'm like two seconds away from chewing my own arm off."

...

**Provo, Utah**

Michael Podolsky was not a happy man. His wife, who had stopped being attractive to him pretty much the moment he'd uttered "I do," had kicked him out for the third time this month. He knew that he should be feeling guilty for all the late nights out without any explanations. After all, it wasn't like he couldn't see what it looked like.

_In fact_, he thought to himself, _I wish I was cheating; it would sound less pathetic_. In reality, though, he'd been spending his afternoons on the lake. It was quiet if you got right out to the middle of it. The only sound was that of water slapping the side of the boat and, though people could be seen on shore, they were little more than phantoms at the edge of his thoughts.

Michael would sit there and wonder how his life had turned out like this. Back in high school, he'd really thought that he would have life made by now. He almost did, he supposed. He'd done all the right things: gone to college, gotten a job, married his high school girlfriend, gotten her pregnant. It was all falling in to place. Despite that, though, he couldn't help thinking that he was always happiest when he wasn't at home or sitting in his cramped cubicle. He had everything, but he wasn't happy.

He sighed heavily and stepped aboard his boat, hitching his overnight bag up higher on his shoulder. "Looks like it's you and me again tonight," he said to his boat, giving its railing a soft pat. "And guess what? According to Joanne, I'll be staying a while." He moved to the wheel and dug around in the icebox that he'd placed nearby, pulling out a beer.

The boat give an almost pleased hum as Michael brought it to life and guided it away from the dock, heading out towards the more secluded spots of shoreline. He'd probably drive her around a bit and then dock for the night, see if he couldn't grab a burger further up shore. The fight with Joanne had completely drained him and he figured that, because of this, he definitely deserved more beer than usual. With a shrug to no one in particular, Michael downed the entire bottle in a couple of gulps and tossed it in to the lake before grabbing Beer Number Two out of the cooler.

He was just about to turn the boat towards the middle of the lake when he saw somebody standing at the shore. This was already unusual because of the late hour. What was weirder was the fact that it appeared to be a very pretty young woman. Most importantly, though, she wasn't standing on dry land, but was about knee-deep in the water, which was pretty cold this time of year.

"What the..." Michael craned his neck to get a better look. The woman was soaked to the skin, her dark hair hanging in dripping, shining strands around her unnaturally pale face. She was swaying from side to side, eyes closed, singing a soft but enchanting melody seemingly to herself. Without really thinking about it, he steered the boat closer to where the woman was, waiting until he hit water shallow enough to get out.

"You okay, there, sweetheart?" He yelled out.

She stopped her swaying and slow spinning to regard Michael with dark eyes and, though she didn't appear to be yelling Michael could hear her speak perfectly. "I'm so cold. Won't you help me?"

He anchored the boat about ten yards from shore and vaulted over the edge, expecting the water to be about chest-height at this point. Luckily, the water level turned out to be even lower, only reaching his hips. "What are you doing out here at a time like this?" He asked, genuinely concerned for the poor girl. She was wearing a white blouse that clung to her wet skin, and a dark skirt that floated in the water surrounding her. What on earth was a girl doing dressed like that here, of all places?

He waded towards her, fighting the resistance of the water and using his dry hand to dial an ambulance on his cell phone. Before he even had a chance to dial the last digit, though, the girl disappeared. Despite not being able to see her, he could still hear her song echoing around him, directionless. Michael blinked, then cast around, eyes scanning the forest beyond the shore. "Lady?" he called.

"Yes?" Her voice, sounding no closer than it had before, came from right behind him. Michael spun around, finding himself face to face with her. He dropped his phone. It made a small but ominous _plop_ as it was submerged beneath the lake's inky surface.

"Whoa, you uh, move pretty fast there," he laughed nervously, his heart pounding. One corner of her blue mouth lifted in to a smile. Up close, much of her beauty was lost. He could see the dark blue of her veins under the paper-thinness of her too-stretched skin. Her hair was matted with bits of algae and stones hanging from it, and her eyes, which had before looked bright blue, were pale and devoid of life. And pupils.

"I'm so cold," she told him again. "Hold me." She moved to wrap her arms around his shoulders, but he took a step back.

"Uhm, let's get you on to dry land first," Michael said as calmly as he could, feeling that he could best help the girl when she wasn't trying to jump him in the water. He _really_ wanted to help her out.

Her expression morphed at this, disfiguring her face in to an ugly, angry look. "Hold me." She commanded, reaching for him once more.

The trees on the shore muffled the sounds of Michael's screams and the ensuing gurgling, followed after what seemed like an eternity by silence. All the while, her song continued to echo quietly through the night air.

...

"How do you guys feel about taking a job?" Kail asked as she walked out of the gas station store towards the impala, lukewarm coffee and protein bar in one hand, a local newspaper in the other.

Sam and Dean exchanged looks as Dean tore open the bag of potato chips that he had bought for breakfast. "I thought we were searching for the Grace?" Sam asked, stealing one of Dean's chips.

"Yeah, but I can't really do much until another sign appears." Kail took a sip of coffee. "I'm keeping an eye out, but, until then, we might as well do something useful."

Dean shrugged, taking a swig of beer. "What's the job?"

Kail held up a newspaper that she had bought in the gas station. "In the last month, six men have gone missing from the same lake, all of them in their mid-twenties. Yesterday, one of them turned up, drowned. Even though he'd been missing for weeks, his time of death was estimated as only a few hours before he was found. What's weird is, all of them were pretty competent swimmers. Two owned boats, three were scuba-divers, and one was training for the Olympics. As far as I can tell, there's no connection between any of them, besides their ages and the fact that they spend a lot of time in the lake."

"Huh. Still sounds like it could be a human to me. What do you think it is?" Dean asked through a mouthful of chips.

Kail leaned against her bike, taking a bite of protein bar and chewing it thoughtfully. "My money's on some kind of water spirit, but we can't really say for sure until we've checked it out. It's on our way, in any case. You interested?"

Dean glanced at Sam, who shrugged. "It's not like we have anything better to do."

.

"Something about this is bothering me," Dean said as they settled back in to the Impala to head out to Provo.

Sam sighed. "That's new." He understood Dean's paranoia, but it was really getting old.

"No, I mean, she wants us to help her find this Grace, but now she wants to take up a job with us? It doesn't make sense."

"Well, remember when we were looking for Dad? We hunted in between leads as well," Sam pointed out reasonably.

"I guess," Dean said absently, clearly not convinced. "I just wish that I knew what she was hiding from us."

Sam couldn't really argue with that.

...

"Ah, magic fingers, my old friends," Kail sighed as she stepped in to Sam and Dean's motel room. They'd spent most of the morning driving, but had managed to reach Provo before noon. Without consulting Sam and Dean, Kail had ordered her own room, saying that there was no way in hell she would be sharing a bathroom with the two brothers. They couldn't blame her for that. They'd decided to split up for half an hour or so and then meet back in Dean and Sam's room.

In the time off, Kail had showered away the hours spent on the road and Sam and Dean had gone to pick up some takeout.

Sam snorted at Kail's comment, looking up as she came in. "Hard at work researching?"

"Hey, you try driving a motorbike for that long," Kail told him, grabbing her take-out order off the table and sitting down in a vacant chair.

"You could have ridden in the Impala," Sam reminded her.

"Nah. Poor Dean would have caused an accident checking the rear-view mirror to make sure I didn't slit his throat or something," Kail smirked dryly.

"Funny," Dean said sarcastically, but didn't seem too insulted. Sam had noticed that, although his brother wasn't exactly Kail's biggest fan, he was at least relaxing a bit more around her. This came as a great relief to Sam, who was pretty fond of Kail ever since she had done him the small favour of saving his soul. More than that, he hated being around Dean when he was tense.

"So what do you guys wanna do about this one?" Kail asked, opening the polystyrene box containing her meal and grabbing a plastic fork off the table.

"What, you're not gonna try to take charge?" Dean raised an eyebrow. Kail had already convinced them to help her find something that she couldn't accurately follow as well as take a job that looked like a bust, causing Dean to assume that she would insist on having the job done her way.

"Why would I? You guys are good hunters. I'm pretty sure that the job's safe in your hands," she pointed out, sipping from a bottle of water.

"Fair enough," Dean shrugged, secretly surprised that she was being so logical about this. This just served to remind him how much he disliked the way in which she consistently proved all of his concerns about her wrong. It was unsettling. "Well, the guy who was found dead was named Michael Podolsky. I'm thinking we split up to talk to the wife and check out the body."

Kail nodded. "Sounds good. Do you mind if I don't go to the morgue?"

"What? You don't like dead bodies?" Sam gave her an incredulous look. "You, the ghost-whisperer?"

"I either deal with souls that aren't in bodies anymore or people that are still alive. Dead bodies aren't in my job description," she said defensively. "I don't mind them, but morgues are just creepy."

"Okay, princess," Dean had managed to stop just short of sniggering. Just. "I'll take the morgue. You and Sam go talk to the wife. You do have a fake ID, right?"

"No, Dean, usually I just get by on telling people the truth," she answered sarcastically. "Of course I have a fake ID." She turned her gaze to Sam. "We going with FBI agents?"

Sam nodded. "Keeping it simple seems best. You must be a little rusty, right?" He teased.

Kail laughed. "It's like riding a bike. No need to go easy on me."

...

"You know, Dean's money was on you wearing a pencil skirt," Sam informed Kail as she climbed in to the Impala, dressed in a dark, fitted suit with her hair tied back in to a braid. Dean, looking upset, trudged off in the direction of the county hospital. Grinning, Sam tucked his just-won five-dollar bill in to the pocket of his blazer.

Kail arched an eyebrow. "Dean knows what a pencil-skirt is?"

Sam shrugged. "You'd be surprised. I just figured that you mostly own clothes that you can ride your bike in."

"You're clearly the smarter, if less optimistic, sibling," Kail said wryly as Sam started the car, making him laugh.

They drove for the next few minutes in silence, which was comfortably filled with the music on the radio. Eventually, though, Sam spoke. To be honest, he'd been wanting to talk to Kail for a while now but, with everything that had happened at her place, all of the travelling, and Dean's bad mood, he hadn't gotten the chance.

"Hey Kail... I just want to uh, thank you for what you did. You know, healing my soul," he said, keeping his eyes on the road, but still able to see Kail smiling from the corner of his eye.

"No need. Even if I hadn't wanted to do it, your brother didn't give me much of a choice. Neither did Castiel. But you're welcome."

"How do you know Cas, anyway?"

"He helped me out when I needed it," she answered, not looking at Sam. "I healed a couple of souls for him every now and then."

Sam's brow furrowed. "Wait, so you helped him get more powerful?"

Kail sighed. "I didn't know what he'd become. I just thought that he'd defeat Raphael and then put the souls back."

"Isn't that kind of naive?"

"I figured that, if anyone could do it, Cas could. He was one of the best," Kail watched the passing scenery intently, a tinge of sadness to her voice.

"What did he do for you to have that kind of faith in him?"Even though he'd asked the question, Sam couldn't really blame her for believing in Castiel's goodness. Both he and Dean had, over the last year, come to see Cas as family. He had, after all, saved both of them from hell. Mostly.

"I don't really want to go in to it, but uh, he got to me when I was in a really bad place and he helped me handle it better," Kail smiled sadly. "If it weren't for him, I'd probably be dead."

"Yeah?" Sam was hoping that, for once, she'd elaborate.

She didn't. "Yeah."

Sam sighed. "Look, Kail, I know you don't like talking about that stuff, but it would be a lot easier for Dean to trust you if either of us actually knew something about you."

Kail turned away from the window to look at Sam. Although he couldn't really look directly at her while navigating a suburb, he thought that he could see genuine regret on her face. He wasn't far off. Kail, while not liking what Sam was saying, knew that it was true, and she understood that he was coming from a good place. It wasn't as if she didn't know everything about him, either. From that perspective, it seemed only fair that she share something.

After a long pause, she finally said, "What do you want to know?"

Sam's surprise was pretty obvious. He hadn't expected it to be that easy. "Uh... well, how about what you were doing in Africa?"

Kail looked away from Sam again, her eyes looking out the window without really seeing. She took a deep breath. "I lived there from when I was little with my mom, my dad, my big brother and my baby sister. My parents were searching for the Grace. Since some of the oldest fossils were found in Africa, they figured it was a good place to start. In between leads, my parents hunted. My brother and sister and I were home-schooled. We studied in the car while we drove between jobs. My dad taught me everything I know about hunting and fighting, but my mom was the expert on lore. They were an incredible team. We had a lot of hard times growing up, especially with my... abilities, but we were a really close family. We were pretty unstoppable hunters, too." She stopped for a moment, then continued, her tone suddenly distant. "Then, when I was about seventeen, they died."

Sam almost totalled the car in shock. "Whoa, what? All of them?"

"Yeah," the response was a whisper. Kail still wasn't looking at Sam, but he could see a muscle jumping in her cheek.

Sam was lost for words. He'd lost a lot of people in his life, more than anyone should ever have to, but he couldn't even comprehend losing everyone at once, at the age of seventeen. He then remembered that her aunt and uncle had also been killed later on by Marius, and suddenly he felt guilty for ever complaining about anything ever. "Kail, I'm so sorry. I can't even imagine... I mean..."

"It was a long time ago," she shrugged tonelessly.

Before Sam could say anything else, they reached the Podolsky household. It was a modest, pretty house with a neatly-kept lawn, flower-boxes outside the windows and, no kidding, a white picket fence. If it hadn't been for the cold, wet weather, the scene would have been iconic. Sam pulled the impala up to the curb, opening his mouth to say something to Kail, but she was already opening the passenger side door and climbing out, checking the inside of her jacket to make sure her ID was still there.

"You good to talk to her?" He asked as they made their way up the driveway. They stepped up on to the porch, which could only be described as artfully quaint.

"Working with souls kind of makes me kind of good with depressed people," she told him tersely by way of answer and rang the doorbell. Obviously the conversation in the car had put her in a bad mood.

The door opened to reveal a woman, about Kail's age, dressed in jeans and a baggy sweater that hung off her thin frame, except for where it clung to her pregnant belly. She gave the impression of someone who hadn't slept in a very long time. "Yes?" She asked, her voice soft.

"Good morning, ma'am, are you Mrs. Podolsky?" Kail's tone was formal.

"Yes. Can I help you?" Her eyes moved between the two of them and her hand moved to her stomach subconsciously.

"I'm Agent Bryan, this is Agent Sambora. We're with the FBI and we were hoping to ask you some questions about your husband." As Sam spoke, he and Kail held up their ID's. She examined them a moment before nodding, but not moving from her position slightly behind the doorframe.

"I don't understand. I've already spoken to the police about this."

"I know, ma'am but, as you may have heard, incidents similar to that of your husband have been occurring and we've been called out to investigate."

Sam had to stop himself from looking sidelong at Kail in surprise. Her tone was perfect. It was warm, yet professional. Formal, yet comforting. She clearly hadn't been lying about learning from her dealings with souls.

The woman was still on edge, but seemed far more reassured. "Of course. Please, come in." She opened the door wide enough to let them pass and stepped aside, her arms curled nervously around her abdomen. Kail and Sam stepped through the doorway. "You want something to drink?" Her words were polite, but they lacked a certain quality behind them. They merely ended up sounding hollow.

As Mrs. Podolsky turned to lead the two agents in to the tastefully decorated living room, Kail's eyes turned that bright, eerie blue and she examined the woman. Sam shot her a 'what the hell are you doing?' look and Kail, eyes back to normal, responded with a 'What do you think?' look of her own.

"So what do you want to know?" Mrs. Podolsky inquired once they were seated. She had perched on the edge of an armchair, while Kail and Sam took the couch opposite her. It felt as though she had specifically chosen to sit where there would be a coffee table between them.

"What can you tell us about your husband's behaviour prior to his death?" Sam inquired quietly, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, the picture of concern. Like hell would he let Kail do better at this than him.

She bit her lip pensively for a moment before replying, staring down at her hands. "He was distant. He'd come home late most nights. I thought he was cheating on me." She took a deep, shuddering breath. "He said that he was just spending his afternoons on the boat, but I didn't believe him. I kicked him out the night that he disappeared..."

Sam felt awful for pushing more questions on her, but, nevertheless, he had to carry on. "And your husband, he didn't report anything strange?"

She looked up, eyes a little redder than before. _Please don't cry, please don't cry,_ Sam thought. Having grown up surrounded mostly by men, he still couldn't handle crying very well, especially when it was a woman. "What do you mean?" she asked, her voice wavering perilously.

"Did he have any strange dreams, or did he feel like anyone was following him?" Kail supplied, somehow communicating how much she regretted having to ask this.

Mrs. Podolsky shook her head. "If he did, I wouldn't know. Mostly, we just fought and then he'd go off on that boat of his..." her voice choked, the dam behind which she had been holding her tears breaking, and Kail moved forward to kneel beside the woman's armchair.

"It's not your fault," she told her, as the woman buried her head in her hands, weeping softly. "My partner and I are going to leave now. We're very sorry for bothering you." Kail had one hand on Mrs. Podolsky's knee, and the other on her back. As she spoke, she moved it to the back of her neck. A loud crackling sound was heard, like an electric shock. Kail pulled her hand back quickly as the woman gasped.

"Sorry, sorry. Static shock," Kail told her calmly, passing her a box of tissues from the coffee table, as well as a card with her fake name on it. "We'll show ourselves out, Joanne," she reassured the woman as she stood, clearly out of habit, to take them to the door. "But, if you do think of anything, please give us a call."

Mrs. Podolsky nodded, sniffing a bit and taking the card. "I'm sorry about this, agents, it's just been... difficult,"

"We understand," Kail responded, standing up. Sam did the same. "If we find anything, we'll be in touch."

.

"Static shock, huh?" Sam rounded on Kail as they left the house. Kail shrugged. "You healed her, didn't you?"

"Not really," Kail answered as they made their way towards the impala. "It wasn't healing so much as... setting a broken bone so that it can heal properly. I would have left it, except I'm worried about the baby."

"You didn't have to go in to her head, though?" Sam unlocked the impala and they climbed in.

"She didn't spend over a year in hell," Kail pointed out, "I could have healed you without going in to your head, but it would have hurt a hell of a lot worse than a static shock for both of us."

Sam's phone rang just before he started up the car. "It's Dean," he said, glancing at the screen before flipping the phone open. "Yeah?"

"You got anything?" From the traffic sounds in the background, it was clear that Dean had just left the hospital building that the morgue was in.

"Not really, just some marriage issues. We'll check out the other victims' families, though, see if there's a connection. How about you?"

"Well, this is definitely our kind of case."

"What makes you say that?"

"Even though he was found in the lake, he wasn't drowned. He showed signs of starvation and extreme blood loss."

"I fail to see how a human couldn't do that."

"Well, there are two puncture wounds in the back of his neck and the cause of death is the bends."

"As in, he tried to swim upwards from very deep water too fast?"

"Yeah."

"Damn."

"Yeah. I'll call Bobby and see if he can figure anything out while you guys talk to the families. I'll meet you back at the motel."

"Got it."

"Oh and Sam? Be careful."

"Dean, they're just grieving families, I'm sure I can handle-"

"I'm not talking about the families." With that, Dean hung up. Sam sighed, leaning back in his seat and running a hand through his hair.

"You heard that?" He asked Kail, who nodded. "I'm sorry. He's just-"

"It's okay, I get it."

...

"Found anything?" Dean inquired, not even looking up from his laptop as Sam and Kail entered the motel room, both of them looking tired after a long day of talking to families desperate for information. Despite having only healed one person, Kail looked exhausted.

"Whole lot of nothing," Sam answered, throwing himself down on his bed while Kail took a seat next to the table. "Just a lot of sad people. Tell me you found something?"

"Just heard back from Bobby," Dean replied. "Looks like Kail was right about it being a water spirit. He says it might be a Yodyanoy."

"Have we even faced one of those before?" Sam propped himself up on his elbows.

"Nope. Do you need to refresh on the lore? 'Cause I did."

"Please."

"Water creatures that look like a frog on steroids. Often drown people when they're displeased with the state of the water, which makes sense, since there's been a lot of controversy about a local factory dumping waste in the lake." Dean held up the corresponding newspaper article. "Sometimes they drag people down in to the water to be their slaves, which is probably what's happening here."

"It matches up," Kail nodded. "So how do we kill it?"

Dean ran a hand over his hair in frustration. "That's the problem. There's no lore that I can find on how to kill it. If you ask me, though, I think our best bet is fire."

"So we go out to the lake, wait for him to show, grab him and turn him in to French cuisine, hoping that he won't recover?" Kail summarised, a sceptical eyebrow raised.

"Most things tend not to bounce back from being burned to a crisp," Dean pointed out.

Sam cast a glance out the window at the darkening sky. "Looks like now's our chance to test your theory."

Dean heaved a sigh as he stood up, grabbing the keys to the impala out of the air as Sam threw them his way. "If I have to swim for this, I'm going to be pissed."

...

"Okay, you guys go that way; I'll go the other way." Kail readjusted her grip on her home-made flame-thrower and started off.

"Woah, wait, why are you going off on your own?" Sam called, stopping Kail in her tracks.

Kail turned around and gave Sam the same look she had given him when he'd asked why she wouldn't ride in the impala. "You guys are kind of this thing's type," she explained with more than a little condescension. "You'll want to watch each other's backs. It's safer for you two to stick together, but we'll cover more ground if we split up. It's not like we can't keep in touch." She held up the walkie-talkie that they'd given her.

They couldn't argue with that. "You're sure you'll be okay?"

Kail snorted and started walking away again. "Yeah. Just make sure that I don't have to come in and save your asses," she threw over her shoulder, waving a little.

Sam and Dean exchanged looks and set off in the opposite direction to Kail, towards a more secluded piece of shoreline.

"I hate this," Dean muttered. "I hate water-spirits. They're so much friggin' creepier than the normal ones, you know?"

"It's the whole hand-reaching-out-of-the-water-to-grab-your-ankle-thing, isn't it?" Sam answered by way of agreement, keeping his flashlight roving back and forth.

"Exactly. There's no easy or un-scary way to find a water spirit. And _all of them_ are slimy."

"Well, there's not even a guarantee that we'll find this thing tonight," Sam reasoned.

"I'm pretty sure we will." Dean sighed, sounding defeated. "People have been avoiding the lake like the plague. It's been slim pickings for a while. It must be getting a little desperate."

A few tense, silent moments later, the walkie-talkie on Dean's hip crackled to life, making him jump more than he'd have liked to admit. "You guys still alive?" Even with the crap signal, her teasing tone of voice could be heard.

"Yeah," Dean responded, stopping in his tracks. Sam kept a look-out for both of them, his flashlight sweeping in a wide arc. "You found anything?"

"Nope. How about you?"

"Not even a-" Dean stopped short as he heard the song. It was soft, but insistently so. Sam's flashlight beam fell on a figure in the water. Well, she sure as hell wasn't a frogman. Her long hair draped attractively across her shoulders as she danced torturously slowly in the water, somehow keeping time with the melody issuing from her full lips.

"Dean?" Kail's voice crackled through the walkie-talkie, but Dean ignored it, letting it fall from his hand and in to the marshy grass.

"We have to help her," Sam told Dean urgently, making his way towards her. Dean nodded, following suit.

"Sam? Dean? What's happening?" Kail's voice seemed so much farther away now. The only voice that mattered was the girl's. It was perfect and lovely and they simply _had_ to help her.

"Hey, are you okay, there?" Dean called over. The girl stopped her dancing to give him a sad smile. "It's okay, Sam and I are gonna help you out. Don't worry."

Sam nodded his head in vigorous agreement. "Everything's going to be fine."

...

"Dammit!" Kail slapped the walkie-talkie against her hand, hoping against hope that it was just an equipment malfunction. "Guys? Guys, talk to me," she shouted urgently in to the microphone. No response. Kail swore again, running to the area towards which Sam and Dean had been heading.

She found the walkie-talkie in the grass about ten feet from shore, and Sam's flashlight close by. Their gas canisters could be seen half-submerged in the water right on shore. The only other sign that the two brothers had been there were some footprints leading in to the lake. "Idiots," Kail muttered, whipping out her cell phone to call Bobby.

"Yeah?" Bobby sounded like the phone had woken him up.

"Bobby? I need your help."

"Kail? Is that you?"

"Yeah. It's important. Sam and Dean have been taken." As she spoke she walked slowly back to the docks, ignoring the squelching sounds of mud rising up around her boots while she stepped in it.

"What?" Bobby sounded distinctly more awake now. "What happened?"

"We were scoping out the lake for the Yodyanoy and we split up. I was talking to them on the walkie-talkie when I heard this trippy-sounding music and Dean hung up. They're gone." Kail took a breath, trying to collect her thoughts. "I'm thinking it was a Rusalki."

"Those siren things?"

"It's kind of like a siren, except creepier," Kail agreed impatiently.

"It makes sense. They sometimes work for Yodyanoy and I guess that explains how all those men got lured in to the lake. We should've thought of that sooner." Bobby swore, and Kail really couldn't blame him. "What do you need my help for?"

Kail appreciated Bobby not messing around. "They're obviously being taken somewhere underwater. I need you to research the lake, see if there are any air-pockets or caves that they could be in. Even better, if you could find the fastest way to kill a Rusalki, that would really help."

"Got it. What are you gonna do in the meantime?" Bobby could be heard standing up. Papers began rustling in the background.

"Grocery shopping," Kail answered grimly. "Thanks, Bobby."

...

Cold. Just freezing, freezing cold. Dean awoke with a gasp, his body jerking against the chains that held him against a damp wall of rock. A dull, sourceless light lit the cave just enough for Dean to be able to make out the outlines of his surroundings. As far as he could tell, on either side of him were more men chained to the wall. Opposite him was a blank piece of stony wall down which water was trickled. "Sam?" He whispered out in the dark, trying to move his hands, only to find that they, too, were chained at about eye level.

A groan on his left sounded out. "Dean?" the words were groggy, sluggish. "What happened?"

Come to think of it, Dean couldn't really remember. One moment, he'd been talking to Kail and the next... well, he remembered the undeniable urge that he had felt to help someone perfect and beautiful. "Dude, I think we got jedi mind-tricked."

Another groan. "Jeez, you think we'd be used to this by now."

"Right?"

"Where are we?"

Another voice, sounding from Dean's right answered the question. "Underwater cave." The voice was gravelly from either too much use or not enough.

"Who are you?"

"Josh. Josh Canaris."

"You're one of the guys who went missing," Sam realised out loud.

"Yep."

"This won't make you feel better, Josh, but we were looking for you," Dean informed him, testing the strength of the chains with brief, strong tugs. Yeah, they were pretty well embedded in to the rock.

"Bang-up job finding me," Josh said sarcastically. "What's the plan now?"

"Working on it," Dean answered, casting around for a solution.

"Well, now I feel all better," another voice muttered dryly.

"Our friend is looking for us, okay? We'll be fine." Sam tried to sound reassuring while he, too, tugged on the chains.

"Is he at least more competent that you two?"

"Well, you don't see _her_ down here, do you?" Dean snapped.

There was a silence. After a couple of minutes, Josh piped up again. "Hey, have you guys heard anything about Michael? He escaped while that _thing_ tried to feed on him."

Dean paused a moment before answering, exchanging a look with Sam. "He didn't make it," Dean said finally.

The atmosphere in the cave became more tangibly hopeless. Great.

After staying respectfully silent for a decent amount of time, Sam asked, "What do you mean 'feed'?" As Sam spoke, a soft, hummed tune could be heard from further down the cave. It didn't carry any of the magic that it held previously; it was just creepy.

One of the men snorted ruefully. "You're about to find out."

The girl from the lake gradually appeared, somehow incandescent in the darkness of the cave. She was humming to herself, playing with her matted, dark hair. Her eyes roved over the row of men and she kept moving forward with slow footsteps until she stood over the Winchester brothers, smiling down at them with her watery, green-tinged mouth.

"Who the hell are you?" Dean demanded, and the girl smiled wider, kneeling down to Dean's level.

She reached out a pale, bony hand and stroked his cheek. "Everyone helps me," she told him with a dreamy expression on her face. Before Dean had a chance to retort or even jerk his head away from her hand, the girl stood up, looking towards the direction from which she'd come. "He's coming," she giggled with glee.

They heard and smelt him before they saw him. Wet slapping sounds echoed around the cave, bringing with them the scent of rotting fish and decay. When he did emerge, both Sam and Dean wished that they could un-see it. He had the body of an over-weight man: bulging stomach, barrel chest, and swollen, flabby limbs. That, however, was where his resemblance to a man ended. His head looked like that of a giant frog, green-tinged skin covered in equally disgusting yellow mucus, and his hands and feet were webbed, resulting in the slapping sound every time he took a step. From under his nose slits grew a scraggly greying beard that appeared to be made up of blue algae more than anything else.

The girl slinked up to him, pressing her much smaller body against his. His golden eyes moved over her appreciatively and he draped one slimy arm over her, making her eyes close in pleasure.

"That's just _wrong_," Dean groaned, not wanting to watch anymore. The Yodyanoy looked up at him, eyes narrowing. Without speaking, it removed its arm from around the girl's shoulders, leaving a trail of mucous in its wake, and advanced towards Dean who, despite how creeped out he was, held the Yodyanoy's gaze. He'd be damned if he was going to let the back-end of a swamp be the death of him.

With swiftness that seemed out of place on such an ungainly body, the Yodyanoy reached out and wrapped his over-sized, webbed hand around Dean's neck.

"Dean!" Sam yelled, struggling against the chains, desperately trying to help his brother, who was torturously close.

The Yodyanoy pulled Dean forward, exposing the back of his neck. With a delighted smile, the girl from the lake bent down, opening her mouth to reveal two yellowing, glistening fangs, which she lowered to the exposed nape of Dean's neck. Dean tried to move, straining against the chains that held him, pulling against the Yodyanoy's firm grip. Nothing.

Sam watched in horror as the girl's fangs sunk in to Dean's neck, her pleased mewls drowned out by Dean's cry of pain. It went on for what seemed like forever, until the girl pulled away, wiping primly at the corners of her mouth and retreating behind the Yodyanoy, who released Dean, shoving him in to the cave wall with far more force than necessary. The girl pecked the creature on the cheek, hooking her arm around his and, together, they slowly made their way to the back of the cave, out of sight, the girl laughing softly.

"Dean? Dean, talk to me," Sam ordered urgently, craning his neck to try and get a better look at his brother, who had slumped forward and hung against the chains limply. Blood leaked sluggishly from the wounds in his neck.

"Don't bother," Josh said quietly. "He should be okay. They like to keep their food alive as long as possible." He barked out a humourless laugh. "We can't bleed if we're dead, now can we?"

...

"Sammy," Dean sighed after sitting in the dark for what felt like about five hours. "I don't think we're getting out of this one." He spoke in a low voice, so the others couldn't hear him.

"What do you mean?"

"We're at the bottom of a lake, helpless, with five other guys. Even if Kail can find us, how are we going to get to the surface without dying? An even better question is, how are we going to defeat these things?" Dean leaned his head back against the wall.

"I'm sure Kail's thought of most of that, Dean." Sam was trying to be optimistic. After all, they'd been in far worse scrapes than this one.

"I dunno, Sam. I've been sitting here trying to figure out how I'd do it, and I've got nothing."

As if on cue, soft footsteps began echoing throughout the cave, but not from the direction in which the Yodyanoy had disappeared. All of the cave's occupants tensed, convinced that some fresh new horror would be raining down on them. A flashlight beam could be seen shining from around the corner. After spending so long in the dark, it hurt to look at. Still, filled with hope, none of them could look away. A few seconds later, Kail emerged from behind the corner, flashlight in one hand and a gas bottle in the other.

"Kail!" Dean sputtered, caught between being impressed by the fact that she had made it to the cave while remaining completely dry and being relieved that she had found them at all.

The alert expression on her face melted in to a grin when she caught sight of Sam, Dean, and the other men. She glanced further down the cave anxiously before kneeling down in front of them to inspect their bonds. "What was the _one_ thing I told you before we split up?" She chided rhetorically, tugging on the chains experimentally, and then swiftly removing a bulky back-pack from one shoulder.

"I know, I know. But how did you-"

"I'll explain later," she interrupted, pulling a pair of bolt-cutters out of the back-pack. "Keep watch for me, will you? It'll probably hear me in a second." Kail grunted with effort as she started on Dean's chains, flashlight held between her teeth as she worked. She was surprisingly fast with the job and, in what seemed like very little time, Dean was free, rubbing his wrists. Kail reached in to the back-pack again and pulled out Dean's make-shift flame-thrower, handing it to him. "Cover me," she ordered, ignoring the way he was gaping at her.

"You came prepared with _everything_, didn't you?" He let his tone wander in to the boundaries of awe as he stood up, eyes scanning the cave for any sign of the Yodyanoy's approach.

Kail smirked as she started on Sam's bonds, dispatching them as efficiently as she had Dean's. "I'm amazing, I know." She handed Sam the bolt-cutters and picked up her own gas canister. "Take care of the rest. We'll hold them off." Kail caught sight of Dean's neck. The puncture wounds had dark purple bruises around them and they still appeared to be leaking some blood. "Damn. You think you'll be okay?" She asked, standing up from her crouching position next to Sam.

"I'll hold," Dean answered shortly, pulling his lighter out of his pocket. Fortunately, it was dry.

The Yodyanoy's appearance was, this time, much less ominous but much more frightening. It came running at Kail and Dean on all fours, half hopping and half sprinting like a demented rabbit, its fleshy lips pulled back to reveal sharp fangs dripping with a rust-coloured poison. Without hesitating, Kail and Dean aimed their gas canisters at the Yodyanoy and flicked on their lighters, sending twin spurts of flame right in to the on-coming creature's face.

It let out a hissing yowl, stopping in its tracks to slap at the flames with its webbed hands. In a desperate attempt to stop the merciless onslaught of flames, the creature lunged at Kail, forcing her to side-step. Despite the swiftness of this motion, its spike-tipped hand managed to clip the side of her abdomen, causing her to reel backwards and gasp out in pain, but not interrupt the steady stream of fire that she was sending its way.

"How're we doing, Sam?" Kail called behind her, coughing a little at the awful smell and the pain in her side, not taking her eyes off the Yodyanoy. Its beard had caught on fire, releasing steam as all the water caught up in it evaporated. It seemed too preoccupied with being burned to fight anymore, its shrieks rising to a new fever-pitch that caused everyone with free hands to cover their ears.

"Almost done," Sam answered, using the bolt-cutters to free Josh, who was the last person in the row. Just as Sam was about to cut Josh's last bond, Josh cried out, his gaze centred behind Sam. The Rusalki stood there, her face twisted in supernatural anger, fangs extended far past her lips. Sam turned around a fraction of a second too late and the Rusalki, with strength that wouldn't be expected from her small frame, back-handed Sam, knocking him off his feet and hurling him in to the cave wall.

"Sam!" Dean cried out.

"I'm good here, Dean, go take care of her. Aim for her hair," Kail yelled over the Yodyanoy's dying screams.

Dean didn't need to be told twice. Before the Rusalki could advance any further on Sam's prone form, he spun ninety degrees, leaving an arc of flame in his wake, and blasted her with fire, aiming for her hair, as Kail had instructed. It immediately caught alight, despite being so damp, and the Rusalki's screams joined those of her lover. Her clothes also caught on fire, but she ignored them, choosing instead to desperately claw at the flames in her hair, trying to put them out. Despite the fact that both of their foes seemed pretty much immobilised, Dean and Kail kept their flame throwers trained on them, faces grim.

The moment it seemed that the Rusalki's hair had burnt up entirely, she gave one last, despaired scream and vanished, leaving nothing behind her but a cloud of steam. The Yodyanoy took much longer to die, and Kail didn't let up until about ten seconds after it stopped flailing. Putting her flame-thrower down, she knelt and grabbed a knife from her boot. With quick, precise movements, she cut through the Yodyanoy's charred neck, working until his head was no longer attached to his body. When she stood up, holding the head in one hand, she looked pale and a little sick, but she couldn't be blamed for that.

Kail stood there, panting a little, teeth gritted in an effort not to throw up, blood oozing freely from the wound in her side. The cave's other occupants just stared at her.

At last, Josh broke the silence. "You failed to mention that your friend was a badass," he said mildly, turning to a still-gasping Dean, who shrugged.

"This is pretty new for me, too," he told Josh, offering a hand to Sam, who was still lying on the cave floor. After cutting Josh's last bond and helping him up as well, Dean turned to Kail, who was kneeling down, packing the gas canister back in to her backpack. "You okay?"

Kail winced a little as she stood back up, shouldering her backpack. "I'll hold," she told him, smiling wryly as she picked up the head.

Dean nodded, deciding not to push it any further. Kail didn't seem like the type who enjoyed being fussed over. "Any idea how we get out?" He asked.

Kail tilted her head to the side, still a little green. "No, Dean, because I made it all the way down here hoping that Kermit the Frog over here would give us a ride up." Her sarcasm, though verbally biting, lacked any real malice. "Of course I have an exit strategy. Let's go." She brushed past him towards the cave's exit.

"And feisty," Josh muttered. "Is she single?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "Seriously, man?"

Josh looked unashamed.

The group of men followed Kail to the entrance of the cave, which consisted of a hole in the floor big enough to fit about five slender men or, alternatively, three fat men. It was filled to the brim with water. Kail stood over it, Yodyanoy head in hand.

"Okay, guys, I've got what you wanted," she called in to the hole. "Yodyanoy, extra crispy. Time for your end of the bargain."

"Who's she talking to?" Sam muttered to Dean, voicing what everyone was thinking.

Dean was about to answer that he didn't know, when he saw a head emerge from the surface. It belonged to a cute, blonde, cheerleader-looking type of girl with blue eyes and rosy cheeks. She was distinctly less adorable when she opened her mouth to reveal a row of long, pointy teeth. She spoke to Kail with a voice that somehow managed to hiss and gurgle at the same time.

"Yessss... sssssafe passssssage for you and your friendssss in exsssssssschange for the head," the girl agreed, eyeing the head in Kail's hand.

"Uh, Kail, what's going on?" Sam asked, staring at the hole as if nothing was there.

"Dude, can't you see it?" Dean gave his brother a look and gestured to the girl.

"See what?"

"It's a water sprite, Sam. Type of fairy. You won't be able to see her." Kail didn't look up from the girl and didn't relinquish the head. "You know the rules. Say it three times so that I know you're telling the truth," she told the sprite, her tone similar to that which adults use when telling children to finish their vegetables before they get dessert.

The sprite gave a hiss of frustration, tossing her hair back haughtily. Nevertheless, she began reciting, "I and my ssssissssterrsssss promissssse to provide ssssafe passsssage out of lake to all the humansssss in thissss cave in exssssschange for the head of our tormentor."

As the sprite went on to state her promise two more times, Sam looked at Dean expectantly, realising that Kail's attention was occupied. "What's happening?" he asked, and the other men also turned their gaze to Dean, looking just as confused.

"As far as I can tell, Kail's making a deal with this... demonic jailbait. She'll give it the head if it lets us out of the lake safely," Dean replied, not taking his eyes from the exceedingly weird scene before him.

"Well, what's she waiting for?" Sam pressed, forcing Dean to realise that, even though he could see the weirdness, all Sam could see was some rippling water to which Kail was listening intently.

"She's making the sprite say it three times, for some reason."

The sprite finished her third round of promises and stared up at Kail hungrily. Kail nodded. "That'll do. Enjoy." With that, she handed the head to the sprite, who grinned maliciously before sinking back in to the water, holding the head against her bare chest like it was a teddy-bear. For a few moments, nothing happened. Kail just stood over the hole expectantly, arms folded across her abdomen so that her hand could cover her wound.

Suddenly, with a noise like the last dregs of water disappearing down a drain, the hole began to empty, the water level sinking quickly. After a few seconds, Kail glanced down and gave a satisfied, if shaky, smile. "Let's go, gentlemen," She said, lowering herself so her legs dangled in to the now-empty hole. "They've made us a tunnel."

No one moved. Most of the men were still confused as to what had just happened in the last ten minutes, and the prospect of walking through a tunnel that was deep underwater was more than a little daunting. Kail sighed impatiently, glancing down at her lacerated side. "Today, guys. Unless you feel like staying here?"

Mumbling incomprehensibly, they started forward, following Kail as she jumped down the hole, landing on the damp, sandy bottom of the lake.

The journey through the lake would have actually been quite enjoyable, had it not been for the fact that the majority of the group were unable to walk long distances, having been tied up for weeks with almost nothing to eat. The more able-bodied ones supported the weaker ones but, even so, progress was slow.

"How're you holding up?" Sam asked Kail, coming up next to her as she led the group. Her face was ashen and she was walking sluggishly, but she'd stubbornly refused any help when it had been offered to her. He looked down at her cut side, genuinely concerned, and shrugged off his overshirt. Without a word, he folded it messily, and pressed it to her wound.

Kail looked as though she would resist, but appeared to think better of it. "Thanks," she said, pressing the shirt against the wound. "I'm doing okay. You'd think that, if I remembered to pack bolt-cutters, I'd have thought of a first-aid kit." She glanced back at the limping group following them and winced. "Or at least some snacks."

"Hey, you got us out in one piece. That's enough," Sam reassured her. How did you pull it off, by the way?"

"I got Bobby to figure out your possible location, and then used about ten pounds of steak to bribe the sprites in to helping me get to you. Turns out that they didn't really like the Yodyanoy much, anyway. He's kind of the Hannibal Lecter of water spirits."

"How come you can see them?"

"Because they let me. That's the beauty of a summoning spell," Kail answered, breathing deeply so that she didn't sound too out of breath.

"You make deals with fairies often?"

Sam and Kail both turned to look at Dean, who had asked the question. Like Kail, he had refused any help, despite his obvious weakness. Instead, he was helping some other guy shuffle his way through the sand.

"Yeah. It works a whole lot better than making deals with demons," Kail replied slowly, not understanding the suspicion in Dean's voice.

"How so?"

"Well, they generally don't ask for your soul in return and, provided you make a _small_ deal, you can usually get what you want by bribing them with food or information. The smaller fairies even take entertaining stories as payment. You just have to make sure that your deal doesn't have any loopholes and you're set." Kail stumbled a little when she finished speaking. Talking for that long had lowered her concentration and energy. Regardless, she still gestured Sam away when he moved in to help her.

After a long period of time spent trudging along the bottom of the lake, the group could at last see the end of the strange tunnel and, beyond the exit, trees illuminated by the sun's rays. It was a heartening sight. However, it was soon ruined by the rumbling, splashing sound that came up behind them. Turning around to see the source of the noise, Kail groaned. "Those _bitches_."

"What is it?" Sam asked, craning his neck to see what was happening.

"We need to start running." Kail made her way to the back of the group as quickly as she could, pushing the slower ones along, clutching her side all the while.

"Why?" Dean noticed the panic in Kail's voice.

"They promised us safe passage, but not dry passage. They're closing the tunnel, now that we can make it to the shore without dying."

The collapsing of the tunnel was now visible, filling up with water that swiftly twisted towards them. Without another word, everyone began running as best as they could, stumbling across the sand and over rocks to reach the end of the tunnel. Kail kept up the rear, trying to urge along any stragglers, while Sam and Dean pulled along the most injured ones. The water roared as it came closer, drowning out the desperate panting and shouts of the people in the tunnel.

Most of them managed to make it on-shore just before the tunnel completely collapsed. Kail, though, was caught in the vicious flow of water, swallowed up in seconds by the icy waters of the lake.

"Kail!" Sam yelled, looking like he was getting ready to jump in.

Dean placed a hand on his brother's chest. "Hang on," he ordered, eyes scanning the water. Sure enough, Kail's head breached the surface of the water seconds later. She gasped in a lungful of air, wiping her hair out of her eyes before slowly swimming towards shore. Sam and Dean both offered their hands to help her out and she accepted them, allowing the brothers to haul her out of the water so that she could lay, panting, on the sand.

"You okay?" Sam asked, leaning over her. She looked pale and exhausted, but at least she was breathing.

"Fantastic," Kail breathed, shivering. "But if you ever get kidnapped again, don't expect me to run in and save you."

...

The air was still. The birds hadn't even started singing yet, but the sun was slowly making its way towards the horizon, throwing a promising glow ahead of it which lit up the inky landscape that Kail was watching, leaning on the hood of the impala. Clutching a beer, Dean sat next to her, one foot on the cooler box in which they kept the beer and water bottles. Sam was asleep in the backseat, exhausted after driving for so long while Dean slept off his massive blood loss. Kail had, after a couple of self-administered stitches and a brief nap, insisted that she was quite capable of driving her bike. Surprisingly, she'd managed well so far.

They were silent for a long time, listening to the world slowly wake up around them, watching the sun rise. The silence wasn't amiable, but it was comfortable.

After checking her watch, Kail reached a hand in to her pocket and drew out a reasonably-sized collection of pills in a variety of shapes and colours.

"Those are a lot of pills you're taking," Dean observed, eyebrow raised.

"Vitamins," Kail shrugged, swallowing about half of them with one swig of water.

"Vitamins that come in prescription bottles?" Dean nodded towards Kail's half-open backpack, which did, indeed, contain orange prescription bottles.

Kail scowled at the bag a moment, and then sighed, looking at Dean wearily. "I'm not very good at handling... everything," she said reluctantly, having trouble getting the words out. It was obvious that she didn't like to admit weakness.

Dean was quiet for a while, sipping his beer, but he didn't stay that way for long. "You know, Sam told me about your family. I'm sorry."

Kail tore her eyes from the sunrise to give Dean an exasperated look. "Are we really going to do this?"

Dean was a little taken aback. This wasn't a reaction that he usually got. "Do what?"

"Trade back stories, discuss how twisted we are but also how we've grown stronger and we'll keep fighting till the end? Exchange soulful looks? Bond?"

Dean laughed a little and took a sip of beer. "I guess not," he answered. He was somehow amused and disappointed at the same time. It wasn't like he particularly wanted to share some sort of emotional moment with Kail, but he did want to hear a little more about her, if only because then she'd stop seeming so distant to him.

"Good." Kail turned back to the sunset. "It's a beautiful morning. We shouldn't ruin it with the past."

...

_Just to clear something up, Yodyanoy's really only exist in the Supernatural universe. I found out about them by reading the Wiki (it's AMAZING, by the way). Normally, they're called Vodyanoy. I don't know if this is an error on the Wiki's part or just a show error in general. Either way, I decided to go with it._

_Unfortunately, I won't be here for a week, so the next update should take __**at least**__ a week and a half. It'll be worth it, though. I promise. _

_Review if you feel like it. Not only does it help me make the story better, but it lets me know you care. :)_

_Thanks, all!_

_-Simone_


	4. Chapter 4: In the Closet

**Author's Note**

_Hello, my lovely readers. It's been a while, I know. I said that I'd take a week and a half tops and then, BAM, I end up taking five weeks. I really am sorry about that. I would've done it faster, but I really, really wanted this chapter to be decent and school started again, so I didn't have much free time to work on it. This unfortunately means that I'll be churning our new instalments much more slowly than before, so you'll have to bear with me a little._

_I feel like this chapter is a bit of a teaser, more than anything, I think, because it hints at a lot of things that are going to happen, without anything actually happening. Again, sorry, but it had to be like that. On the bright side, you learn more about Kail. _

_I just want to give out a big thank you to all of the wonderful people who've read my story and, especially, the people who've reviewed it. The reviews really do help a great deal when I'm writing a scene that I don't feel like doing. _

_Let me know what you think of this one, guys. I'm still a bit iffy about it. _

_-Simone_

_..._

**Winslow, Arizona**

It had to happen. Tonight. She'd been putting it off for a while, worried that she'd read the signs wrong, sure that she was going crazy. Tonight, though, she was absolutely sure. What she was feeling wasn't crazy; it was _right_. It was the absolute truth. Her sisters would praise her for it. They would hold her close against the storm of people who wouldn't understand. She would be blessed, held high above all others.

Had it been a normal night, Molly Malone would have fixed herself a cup of tea before going to bed. Ordinarily, she would have placed her tea next to her bed, and then went to check on the kids one last time. Ordinarily, she would have smiled down on their peaceful faces, maybe even bending over to kiss them on the forehead. Ordinarily, she would have completed this action and gone straight to bed, where she could read the Good Word and sip her tea while her husband slept beside her.

However, tonight was not a normal night. Molly Malone did things that she wouldn't ordinarily do. Ordinarily, she wouldn't sit in the darkness of the living room until the whole house was asleep. Ordinarily, she wouldn't make her way to the kitchen and pull a long, strong length of cord from the top drawer. Ordinarily, she wouldn't make her way up the stairs while mumbling psalms to herself. Ordinarily, she wouldn't stand in the middle of the hallway, deliberating. Ordinarily, she wouldn't enter her youngest child's room and wrap the cord around her youngest child's neck, pulling it tight until she saw the life drain from his wide-open eyes. Ordinarily, she wouldn't repeat this process with her middle child and her oldest child. Ordinarily, though, she would have noticed the glowing, golden eyes watching her with glee.

…

"I still don't think it's fair," Dean mumbled as he paid for Kail's breakfast.

Kail snorted. "Just because you underestimated me, doesn't mean it's not fair." She took a bite of toast.

"You don't even drink grown-up drinks. How was I supposed to figure that you could scam a grown-up amount money?" Dean protested, glancing over at Sam for back up. His brother, who had his nose buried in a newspaper, provided no support. Typical.

Kail decided not to rise to Dean's vague insult. "You should've seen it coming," she pointed out in between bites.

"A skirt? Kail, you wear clothes just as old and crappy as mine. It's not real obvious that you own a skirt. Especially not a skirt that shows _that_ much thigh."

"Being a female hunter has its advantages." Kail shrugged. "As in, there's a strong link between how short a skirt is and how much money you can scam off of guys." She paused, looking thoughtful, then added, "And some girls, depending on the kind of bar."

Dean shot her an impressed look, shaking his head. "Still, it's cheating. Next time we bet who can scam more money in one night, you're not allowed to dress like that."

"I'd still win," Kail smirked.

Before Dean could protest, Sam interrupted the conversation, a troubled expression on his face. "Guys, I think you should check this out." He passed Kail the newspaper that he had been reading, and explained it while she scanned it. "There's been a string of murders in Arizona over the last month. All of them children, all of them killed by their mothers."

The light-hearted atmosphere of the table died down immediately. The three of them had seen a lot of terrible things, and it took quite a lot for something to bother them but, when it came to children, it was still difficult to handle. Sam continued. "The thing is, all of the moms who killed their kids claim that God told them to."

Dean regarded his brother quietly for a moment before asking, "You think Cas has something to do with this?"

Sam sighed, running a hand through his hair. "I dunno, man. A lot of different creatures like to mess with people's heads. Sometimes those people just think the voice speaking to them is God's."

"Cas wouldn't do this," Kail said with conviction. "It doesn't make any sense."

"Yeah, well, a year ago, I wouldn't have thought that Cas would make a deal with the King of Hell to steal souls from purgatory, because it didn't make sense. He's not exactly predictable," Dean pointed out, looking bitter.

"But what could he possibly gain from it? At least with the souls his goal was clear."

Dean had his argument face on and, quickly, Sam interrupted the conversation for a second time. "Either way, guys, we're definitely checking it out."

…

Kail and the Winchesters spent the majority of the next day driving down to Arizona, no one really in the mood to talk. Once they reached Winslow, they agreed to start working the next day, since ten o'clock at night is too late to do any real investigating.

Early the next morning, when the sun was just creeping over the horizon, Kail headed out before either of the brothers even woke up, under the guise of going for a run. To be fair, it did take a fair bit of running before she reached her destination. She ran until she stood on an empty patch of land with scrubby grass dotting the otherwise red sand.

She glanced about her for a few seconds, making sure that there was no one else around. "Castiel?" Kail spoke in a normal voice, eyes raised heavenwards. "I need a moment."

For once, Castiel appeared in front of her, still managing to make her flinch a bit. He was really creepy. The new power that he had gained radiated off of him, filling the air like tar. It was difficult to be around him, breathing in that energy. It felt like trying to suck honey up through a straw. "Is something wrong?" He asked, barely even glancing at his surroundings.

"Yeah, this case we're working. I dunno if you've heard about it." Kail had her arms crossed over her chest and was trying to edge away from Castiel as much as possible without alerting him to how uncomfortable she was. "All of the parents suddenly pulling The Shining on their kids?"

Castiel tilted his head to the side, not looking very impressed. "You called me down to talk about work?"

Kail could feel the vague annoyance coming off him in waves. "No. It's just... I was wondering if you did have something to do with it?"

The annoyance grew a little more intense, causing Kail to swallow uncomfortably and take a small step back before Castiel, his voice thick with irritation, inquired, "Why would I do this?"

"That's what I said. I just..." Kail took a breath, wincing at the oily air. "I just want to know because, if you're behind this, I need to figure out how to hide it from Sam and Dean for you."

"You'd do that?" The pressure that Castiel's emotions created in the surrounding air abated a little bit.

"I owe you, don't I?" Kail didn't look very pleased about it.

"I suppose you do." He gave her a long, searching look, noting her discomfort as well as her unhappiness about having to offer to lie to Sam and Dean. Castiel didn't like what he was doing to Kail any more than she did, but it was necessary and it _had_ been her who changed the terms of their deal. "I'm not responsible for what's happening here," he told her finally, averting his gaze away from her.

Kail breathed a sigh of relief. "Good to know you're not completely around the bend."

Castiel decided to disregard this comment. "How is everything?" he asked instead, giving her a meaningful look.

It took Kail a few seconds to catch his meaning. "Oh that. It's okay. I mean, it's like performing open-heart surgery blind-folded _while_ balancing a ball on my nose, but I'm getting by. The pills help."

"Too proud even to say goodbye," she muttered, rolling her eyes as she slowly began jogging back to the motel. It was pretty far off, but she needed the exercise. As she set a pace for herself, she couldn't help wishing that, just once, when she went for a run, she could do it without having to use that time to clear her head. She wished that her head was clear already. She wished that she didn't have to think about pleasing Castiel while keeping the Winchester brothers close. She wished that she didn't have to be working a case that hit home so hard.

She made it back to the motel in about half an hour, as the sun became fully visible above the horizon. Kail was just about to let herself in to her room when Sam emerged from the room next door, looking surprised when he saw her. "What are you doing up?" He asked, with only a little suspicion.

"Running. I couldn't sleep, so..." Kail said by way of answering, glad for how out of breath she was, as well as the sheen of sweat covering her face. It helped sell the lie. Well, it wasn't a complete lie. She _had_ been running for the majority of the last hour.

Sam looked her up and down, taking in her sweatpants and baggy sweater, as well as the fact that she was clearly breathing hard. He nodded, evidently buying it. "See anything interesting?"

Kail shrugged casually. "It's Arizona. Lots of cacti."

Sam snorted. "Fair enough. Guess I'll see you at breakfast?"

"Yeah," Kail smiled tiredly, unlocking the door to her room. "Give me about half an hour."

"You know, you take less time to get ready than Dean," he commented, earning a grin from Kail.

...

"You ordered for me?"Kail inquired as she sat down across from the two brothers in the diner next to the hotel, looking down to see a plate in front of her, laden with eggs, bacon and an indecent amount of toast. Sam was sitting with his laptop in front of him and newspapers strewn around him. Dean was going through their father's journal to see if there was anything useful in there, all the while attempting not to drop any bacon on it. They both glanced up at her arrival.

"Yeah, we figured it wouldn't be a problem, since Dean's paying anyway" Sam replied, going back to his laptop and ignoring his brother's glowering.

"It's not," Kail said slowly. "Except I don't really eat bacon. Or any meat, for that matter. So uh, you can take that, if you want, Dean. You look hungry, anyway."

Dean stared at her in shock. "How do you _live_?" He breathed.

Kail laughed a little. "Sheer force of will. Do you want the bacon or not?"

"Like I'm gonna let it go to waste," Dean muttered by way of reply, shaking his head disbelievingly as he skewered Kail's bacon with his fork and placed it on his own plate. He didn't know why but, lately, he'd been starving.

After a few minutes of contented eating, Kail carefully avoiding any of the food on her plate that had touched the bacon fat, there appeared to be a general decision to start talking about the job.

"So what's the plan?" Kail asked, swallowing a mouthful of egg.

"Well," Dean began, "there's only one survivor. The father walked in before the mother could finish the job. I'm thinking you should go talk to that kid, see if you can't help him out some." Dean shot Kail a meaningful glance and she nodded, not looking incredibly excited about the prospect. "I'll go with you," Dean continued, ignoring Kail's reaction. "And Sam'll investigate the house for evidence of a haunting or demonic possession. If we have time, maybe we'll swing by the psychiatric hospital two towns over to talk to the mother."

"Can't you just investigate the house while I talk to the kid? Why do we have to split up?"

Dean shook his head. "The kid's in a hospital. Survived a severe beating." His expression was stony, indicating exactly how much this job bothered him. It was jobs like these that made him miss a good, old-fashioned haunting

...

There's something disconcerting about hospital noise. It consists of sounds that we hear every day, such as people talking, phones ringing, machines whirring and people walking up and down. Somehow, though, hospitals manage to combine these sounds in such a way that they create an atmosphere of cold, hard tension. The smell of disinfectant only just concealing the scent of sickness certainly doesn't help this impression. Neither do the tired, sunken eyes of people in the waiting room.

"I _hate_ hospitals," Kail muttered as she and Dean made their way through the hallways.

Dean raised an eyebrow at Kail's complaint. "I didn't have you pegged as the squeamish type." He had, after all, watched her decapitate a Yodyanoy which she had burned to a crisp.

"It's not the sickness so much as all of the people. It's... difficult having so many hurt souls in one place." As she spoke, her eyes darted anxiously from person to person. "Especially the paediatric ward."

Dean shot Kail a sidelong glance, slightly concerned. For the few weeks in which he'd known her, Kail had been pretty tough. She didn't complain once about being on the road all the time even though, unlike Sam and Dean, she couldn't let anyone drive for her when she was tired. She had stitched up her own injury alone, not even letting Sam and Dean stay in her room to keep an eye on her. They'd been waiting right outside, though, and they hadn't heard her make a sound. As such, it was really weird for him to see her the way she was at the moment: uneasy and edgy. It made him feel like he should also feel troubled.

"If you feel like you can't handle this..." Dean began, but trailed off when he saw the tired smile on Kail's face.

"What? I don't have to do this if I don't want to? Come on Dean. We both know that this is one of those times when I don't really have a choice."

Dean held her gaze for a moment, noting how tired she looked, but also how resigned she was. It was obvious that this wasn't the first difficult case she'd pulled and she knew that it wouldn't be the last. He averted his eyes. "I'm sorry that you have to do it, anyhow," he said, staring at the floor ahead of him.

Kail shrugged. "It's not your fault. This is kind of a life-long deal, anyway. Complaining about it gets old." As she spoke, they reached the room to which they had been directed.

The curtain was drawn across the bed, so that the only visible parts of the child were his blanketed legs. Seated next to the bed, head cradled in his hands, was a middle-aged man with specks of grey beginning to show in his dark hair. He looked up as Kail and Dean entered the room, revealing the dark circles under his eyes.

"Mr Downs?" Dean inquired, assuming his professional stance.

"Yes. Who are you?" he asked, standing up slowly while his gaze switched between Kail and Dean.

"I'm Kail, this is Dean. We're social workers," Kail answered, giving him her most reassuring look when she saw the panic in his eyes. "We're not here to take away your son. We just need to do an assessment on his psychological state and yours so that we can prescribe help to you, if we find that you need it."

"I've already met with some social workers," Mr Downs informed them, his hand settling protectively on his son's leg.

"Yes, sir. We're just here to do a routine follow-up." Dean, too, had his face arranged in a comforting, warm expression. He and Kail had chosen their clothes to look professional, but well-worn and cheap, causing them to resemble the epitomes of under-paid but well-meaning public servants.

The man nodded slowly, not moving his hand from his son. "What do you need?"

"Do you mind if I speak to your son in here while Dean talks to you out in the hall? You'll be able to see your son the whole time."

He regarded Kail and Dean warily for a long moment, then sighed tiredly. "Sure. Let's make it quick." He leaned over his son's bed, laying a gentle hand on the boy's shoulder. "Hey, Robbie, time to wake up, kiddo." It was at this point that Kail and Dean could, at last, see the boy.

His face was a mass of swollen flesh, with one of his eyes unable to open due to all of the bruising around it. His head was wrapped in bandages that, according to the medical report, were necessary to hold the child's skull together after the life-saving operation he had received. Stitches ran down one side of his face. Both of his arms were in casts. Even some of his fingers were wrapped tightly in gauze. The blankets, which came up to Robert's chest, hid any other injuries that undoubtedly also existed. Robert Downs stirred as his father shook him, his good eye fluttering open while he grumbled tiredly.

Dean and Kail both had to make a concerted effort not to react. Despite this, however, a muscle in Dean's jaw twitched while Kail had to swallow and take a shallow breath, blinking her eyes closed a fraction of a second longer than necessary. Seeing things like this would never get easier.

Mr Downs had spent the past few days staring at this sight and, evidently, by now, he could do it without losing the ability to hold himself together. "The nice lady here wants to talk to you, kid. I'm gonna be right outside in the hall, okay? Just yell if you need me," he murmured, brushing a hand along his son's forehead before nodding to Kail and following Dean in to the hall.

Kail steeled herself and stepped forward, taking a seat next to Robbie's bed so that she was at eye-level with him. "Hey, Robbie. My name's Kail. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?" She tried not to breathe too deeply around him. The injury and pain gave off a subtle, yet over-powering scent.

Robbie turned his head slightly so that he could face her with his good eye. He didn't say anything.

"You know," Kail began, leaning towards the boy despite all of her instincts screaming at her to stop, "we don't have to talk about what happened. We can talk about anything that you want."

The child looked right in to her eyes for a long time before answering. "My mommy's a nice person," he said, his words disfigured by his swollen lips, but his resolution was clear.

"I know, sweetheart," Kail sighed. "Sometimes the people that we love... they don't understand what's happening and they do the wrong thing." If anyone knew that, it was Kail.

"Mommy didn't want to do it," Robbie insisted in a whisper, looking at Kail very solemnly. "But the monster in the closet made her."

Kail's eyes narrowed. "The monster in your closet?"

The child looked at her impatiently. "No. The monster in _her_ closet. The one with the gold eyes."

...

"So can I ask what angle you're looking at this from?" Sam asked as he sat down opposite the detective that had agreed to meet with him at the station. He'd managed to sweep the houses pretty fast and found nothing. He figured the best thing to do would be to find out whether the police had any useful leads that he could work off of.

"At first we thought– hoped– that it was a coincidence but then, the third set of murders happened. At the moment, we're working every angle from secret cult to something in the water," the detective looked sceptical. She was young, obviously only just having gotten her detective's badge, and pretty in a hard, efficient sort of way.

"Any luck?"

She sighed and shook her head. "Nope. Their tox-screens came out clean and, as far as we can tell, the women didn't even know each other. They lived in different parts of town, had different jobs. One sold Real Estate, the other was a journalist, and the last one was a successful car saleswoman. The only link is that they were all devout members of their respective faiths and they all blame God for what they did, which is ridiculous," she added, reaching up to touch the golden cross hanging around her neck. "The only thing that we can say for sure is that the murders are connected somehow."

"Have the moms said anything else helpful?"

"Just a lot of babble about how they did the right thing. Interviewing them is impossible at this stage. It's all just gibberish." She paused before putting in, "they all mentioned a deep voice talking to them, telling them to do it. They said they heard it in their heads."

"That sounds like a solid lead," Sam said wryly, earning a snort from the officer. He stood up. "Thank you for your time, Detective." He handed her a card. "Please call me if you find anything else."

Detective Riley Hutchinson took the card and stood up to shake Sam's hand with a groan of tired effort. "Boy, if I find anything, I'll call _everyone_."

...

About ten minutes later, Kail signalled to Dean that she was done and, mustering up his best professionally concerned look, he politely wrapped up his conversation with Mr Downs, thanking him for his time.

Kail smiled wanly at Mr Downs as she passed him on her way out, her hand brushing against his. A loud, crackling sound could be heard and both of them jumped in shock, exchanging embarrassed smiles afterwards. "Sorry about that, sir. The air's so dry this time of year."

"Not your fault. Anything I need to know about Robbie?" The man gave her a smile that didn't quite hide his anxiety.

"Considering what happened, he's coping fairly well. He obviously grew up in a loving environment. I would suggest sending him to a psychologist and keeping an eye out for any strange behaviour. We'll send you a more thorough report later, of course," Kail informed him, her expression warm.

Mr Downs looked incredibly relieved as he nodded. "Of course. Thank you very much. You two take care." With that, he returned to his position next to his son's bed, waving out Kail and Dean.

Dean shot a glance at Kail, who looked far paler than she had before. "You okay?"

Kail nodded. "Yeah. I just need to sit down," she mumbled, carefully making her way out of the hospital, almost flinching every time she passed another person. Her movements, while controlled, lacked their usual efficiency. Knowing that she wouldn't appreciate any help, Dean followed, eyeing her to make sure she didn't fall.

"Learn anything useful from the father?" Kail inquired, a little breathless.

"Nope. She hadn't been acting any different before she did it, except that she was a little more tired. He didn't notice anything weird around the house like flickering lights or scratching noises, and his wife has zero family history of mental illness."

"I guess the best way to figure out what something is, would be to find out what it isn't," Kail sighed, not sounding very convinced. Once she collapsed safely in to the impala, she groaned and leaned back in the leather seat.

"You need anything?" Dean asked as he climbed in next to her.

Kail shook her head, smiling faintly. "You don't have to be all nice to me just because I'm being a girl at the moment, you know."

"I know."

Kail mumbled something incomprehensible, leaning forward again to massage her temples.

"This stuff really gets you, huh?"

"Not as much as you'd think. It was just tough with this kid because, where I can usually split the pain halfway, I didn't want to with him. He's already been through so much, you know? So I took all the pain that he was supposed to feel from the healing and felt it myself. It's uh... pretty nasty."

Dean sighed and reversed the impala out of the parking space. "I'm sorry that you have to do stuff like this." He genuinely meant that. He knew how much plain old hunting had taken its toll on him and he couldn't imagine what it would be like to have to hunt and then follow it up by enduring crippling pain to heal someone who wouldn't even fully notice.

Kail shrugged modestly. "You'd do it too if you could see children's souls. When they're abused or hurt, it's like... it's like smashing a priceless work of art or burning a church. It's just wrong on so many levels." She was quiet for a moment before continuing. "Losing someone you love like that: it's the worst thing in the world. No one should have to go through it, especially not a kid. The fact that I can help someone like that is actually pretty awesome."

"It sounds like this whole thing's hit you pretty close to home," Dean observed, looking innocent.

Kail shot him a dry look. "I'm not stupid, Dean. Neither are you. You've probably already had Bobby look in to my records. You know what happened to my family."

Dean figured that there was no point trying to be subtle about it, then. "The details of the report were pretty sketchy."

The expression had drained from Kail's face at the idea of her family and she gazed out the window, her posture suddenly much more tense than tired. Dean instantly felt bad for having brought it up. "I'm sorry," he began, but couldn't find the words to explain himself.

"It's fine," Kail said distantly. "I get it. The report's pretty weird. I'd be curious, too."

"You don't have to tell me, if you don't want to," he protested.

Kail raised a sceptical eyebrow at him. "Will you ever stop looking at me like that if I don't tell you?"

"Looking at you like what?"

"Like you think I did it."

Dean kept quiet, his eyes on the road. While that hadn't been his first instinct, the idea had crossed his mind. There was something off about _anyone_ who had the majority of people around them die while escaping seemingly unharmed.

Kail rolled her eyes and began speaking quietly, factually, as if she was somehow detached from the whole story. "My sister and I had gone to the movies. I don't even remember what we saw. I just remember that it had been funny and we were in a good mood by the time we got back to the hotel. We found what was left of our family in the room, torn to pieces. The police thought it was an animal attack but, my sister and I, we knew better. We split up to find the thing.

"I was on the other side of town a few hours later when I got the call from my sister saying she'd found it at the hospital and she was going in. I told her to wait for me but, by the time I got there, the whole thing was in flames. From what I could figure, she'd tried to get as many people as possible to evacuate the building, then, stupidly, decided that the only way to get the thing was to blow it up. She was this master at explosives. I mean, our dad had taught us one or two things but she just _got_ them." Kail smiled faintly at the memory. "This time, though, she didn't take in to account the oxygen lines running through the hospital. They found her necklace in the rubble." Kail idly reached up a hand to grasp at the light, silver chain around her neck. Despite this sentimental gesture, her recitation of the story had sounded very matter-of-fact, with very little emotion actually displaying itself.

"Wow," Dean said after a long pause, exhaling slowly. "Any idea what did it?" It seemed easier to focus on the facts of the story rather than the emotional implications.

"Rugaru was the best my sister and I could figure at the time but, in Africa, there's so much uncharted territory with supernatural creatures, that it could've been anything."

Dean nodded. "Makes sense." He paused before continuing cautiously. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you seem to be handling it pretty well."

Kail looked surprised. "You think? I guess if a shrink makes you talk about it enough times, the story gets old."

It was Dean's turn to be surprised. "You saw a shrink?"

"My Aunt and Uncle's idea. I moved back to the states and lived with them after my family died. They didn't want me to grow up being emotionally stunted or something." Kail looked pretty amused at the notion. "Of course, if they'd known about me growing up in the life, they would've realised it was a lost cause."

"Huh. You could've just healed up your own soul anyway, couldn't you?"

"Yeah because things are always that easy," Kail laughed bitterly. "I can't heal myself."

"Bad luck."

"You're telling me."

...

Detective Riley Hutchinson heaved a sigh of relief as she finally arrived home. It had been a long, long day. The recent murders had everyone on edge and there was pressure to find the cause, not only from the locals, but from the rest of the nation. Even the FBI was in on it now and she still had no idea where to start. The CDC could only come in on Monday and, until then, her boss would be sitting on her ass wondering why he had promoted her to detective to begin with.

"...too young to be a real detective but they can hire freaking male models to be FBI agents?" she muttered, tossing her keys on the table in the entrance hall and stepping in to the living room. It was dark, except for the flickering of the TV, which was showing a late-night re-run of The Simpsons. In front of the TV sat a little girl of about six years old, curled up in a blanket.

"Sweetie, weren't you supposed to be in bed?" Riley half-smiled tiredly. The little girl turned to look at her mom, eyes glassy from being up so late.

"I hate sleeping when you're not home."

"I know, hon." Riley leaned over and picked her daughter up in to her arms. "But you have to try."

The little girl shook her head vehemently. "No. The monster'll get me."

"There's no monster in your closet _or_ under your bed. I checked, remember?" Riley spoke quietly in to her daughter's hair as she carried her in to the kitchen and set her down on the counter. "Now, I'm gonna make you some warm milk and tuck you in. Sound good?"

The girl nodded, sleepily rubbing one eye.

_She's so needy all the time. Doesn't she realise that you're tired? That you've had a long day and you just want to sleep instead of dealing with her? She's so selfish. Normal children aren't this selfish. Maybe there's something wrong with her. _

Riley shuddered a little. Why on earth was she thinking these things? They were ridiculous. It had been happening for the past couple of nights now, growing ever so slightly more insistent every time. It was probably the stress of work playing tricks on her mind. She was getting to close to this case, which hit especially close to her heart because she loved her own daughter so much. Right?

_You wouldn't be thinking these things if they weren't at least a little bit true._

The detective continued to fret over these persistent thoughts after she'd tucked her daughter in and kissed her good night. She just needed some sleep, that was all, she decided after a while. This case was going to be the death of her.

The golden eyes watched from the closet, invisible lips forming harsh words that were spoken softly, convincingly.

...

"Okay, let me get this straight." Bobby's exasperation radiated from the phone that they had on speaker, echoing around the hotel room. "You have no actual leads except for Sam being 'pretty sure' that it wasn't a demon or spirit; your main sources of information is a kid so high on morphine that he probably doesn't know his own name as well as an over-worked cop with no leads, and you couldn't speak to the actual perp because, according to a cop who has no knowledge of the supernatural, it's not worth the trip?"

"Well," Sam started, "when you put it like that-"

"Are you guys high?"

The three of them flinched at Bobby's disbelief.

Sam was the first to bravely break the guilty silence with, "Well, Bobby, I have a theory but you're not going to like it."

"Shoot."

Sam took a deep breath. "The bogeyman."

Dean turned his head slowly to stare at his brother incredulously, while Kail contended herself with looking at the floor bemusedly, knowing that she'd start laughing if she had to face him. It was Bobby who spoke first.

"Kail, you sure you did a proper job on him?"

Kail let out a short burst of laughter. "My work was perfect. This does support the 'something in the water' theory, though."

To be fair to Sam, he bore this light banter with good grace, even smiling a little. "I'm serious, guys," he insisted. "Think about it. A monster that lives in closets, has freaky eyes and terrorises children in the worst possible way?"

"Or it could just be a demon that likes being in the closet," Dean pointed out before adding, "unlike Crowley."

"You know," Bobby said thoughtfully over Dean's chuckles, "Sam might be on to something."

"C'mon, Bobby, the bogeyman? I know that the thing kids see in their closet is real sometimes, but that doesn't mean it's the bogeyman."

"It could be a bogart gone rogue. Those things can get pretty nasty when they're pissed."

"Yeah, but they tend to stick with one family," Kail interjected. "That's why they get confused with poltergeists."

"All cultures have some sort of bogeyman lore. It seems pretty likely that at least one of them is right," Sam reasoned, ignoring the way that Dean was looking at him, Kail, and the phone in turn, as if he couldn't believe that they were actually exploring this angle.

"Yeah, but, in lore, they don't generally target children via their parents. Have you managed to find any cultures that believe in a bogeyman that makes people do bad things?" Bobby was evidently more than just humouring the theory now. It was the only solid idea that they'd had so far, even if it barely made sense.

Sam shook his head, running a hand through his hair. "No, not yet. It's just a theory, but I'll keep looking."

"You do that. I'll do some research this side. Kail, get some sleep. You'll probably have a lot more to do tomorrow."

"Thanks, Bobby. Take care," she answered, hanging up the phone. She'd managed to forget how exhausted she was until Bobby had mentioned the prospect of sleep. Despite the fact that it meant that she had a reasonable excuse to forgo research for the night, she still felt bad about having an earlier bedtime than anyone else.

"Sorry for slowing things down, guys. I used to be so much better at this," Kail said apologetically, standing up and stretching. Sam glanced at his brother in time to catch Dean's eyes following the arch of Kail's back and the way it caused her shirt to life up slightly, revealing a generous portion of her stomach. Sam rolled his eyes at his brother, who missed the look entirely.

"Don't worry about it, Kail. You did more than us," Sam reassured her. "Get some rest."

Kail nodded. "I promise this won't happen again," she insisted against Sam's reassurances, but made her way to the door nonetheless, jacket slung over one shoulder.

"I'll walk you to your door," Dean said casually, standing up from where he had been resting against the hotel room's desk.

Kail turned and raised an eyebrow. "My door. The one that's like five steps from yours?" Despite her obvious confusion, Kail didn't stop Dean from following her out in to the hall.

"Hey, you're on some demon's hit-list. It could strike any time," Dean shrugged, closing the door to his and Sam's room behind them.

"Right. And you're going to protect me." Even though Kail sounded sceptical, she was smiling as she made her way to the room. It really took only three steps. Dean rested his arm up against the wall next to the door, so that he leaned a little over Kail while she worked the key-card.

"You know, I could keep an eye on you for the _rest_ of tonight, if you want." Dean artfully layered his question with just a tiny hint of meaning. It wasn't enough to suggest anything tactlessly, but it did lay open the invitation. Let it not be said that Dean Winchester doesn't know how to hit on a girl subtly.

Understanding dawned on Kail's face and she turned to look at Dean head-on, more than a little amused. "Really, Dean? Really?"

Unsure of whether or not this reaction was a good one, Dean shrugged noncommittally.

"I'm flattered, but no." Kail was still wearing an awkward but bemused smile as she spoke, giving Dean a look that showed how surprised she was that he had hit on her to begin with. "Maybe try that waitress downstairs? She was checking you out this morning." With that, shaking her head disbelievingly, Kail closed her door, leaving Dean alone in the hallway.

Dean paused before re-entering his hotel room, already able to predict the look that he'd get from his brother. It would be a mixture of I-can't-believe-you-tried-it and I-told-you-so. Still, it wasn't like he could hang around in the hallway all night and that waitress definitely wasn't an option (he'd seen the engagement ring on her finger).

"So she turned you down, huh?" Sam asked, without looking up from his laptop as Dean entered the room. He didn't sound remotely surprised and Dean could see that he had been exactly correct in his prediction of Sam's facial expression.

"You can't blame me for trying," Dean sighed, shutting the door behind him and flopping down on to his bed.

"Actually I can," Sam said, finally looking up from his laptop to level his gaze at Dean. "Look, man, I get it; she's hot and she rides a motorbike. Not only that, but she seems just as damaged as we are." Dean gave a shrug of agreement. "Fact is, she's saved us a couple of times now and the best you can do to thank her is a crappy pick-up line?"

Dean shifted uncomfortably. "Well, when you put it like that..."

"You sound like a jerk," Sam finished, turning back to his computer. "Just 'cause she's a hunter, doesn't mean she's not a girl. At least buy her a drink first."

...

"Hey, so I was thinking about your theory last night, and I think I've got something. It didn't occur to me sooner because I wasn't even sure they existed, but I think we might be looking at a-"

"Dongola Miso from the Congo?" Sam asked, closing the door behind Kail. He'd let her in after her urgent knocking, but only because he'd thought she was in danger. No, she was just excited to be contributing.

Kail looked slightly crestfallen. "Yeah," she admitted. "I'm guessing you found that the connection between all the moms was the fact that their jobs cause them to meet a lot of new people?"

Sam nodded, feeling almost guilty for stealing Kail's thunder. "And it sometimes attacks both children and adults to teach them a lesson about talking to strangers."

"Then, of course, the fact that its name means Man With the Scary Eyes," Kail added, still looking a little dejected.

"That's all great," Dean said, walking out of the bathroom, rubbing a towel over his wet hair. "But how are we gonna find it? Lots of jobs require people to meet strangers all the time. There's no way to narrow it down, is there?"

"Well, I checked the reports again and most of the kids were between the ages of six and twelve, which narrows it down a little. I guess our best shot is to check the records, see if anything stands out," Kail shrugged, her face showing that she wasn't keen on spending a whole day buried under mountains of birth records.

Dean groaned. "Sam, please tell me you've got a better idea."

Sam thought for a few moments before sighing. "I've got nothing. It's at least something to do while we try and work out a better angle."

"Awesome," Dean muttered, shrugging on his jacket. "Freaking awesome. We couldn't have been hunting a vampire or something? I _hate_ research."

...

"You brought friends," Detective Riley stated archly, looking up as the FBI agent from yesterday walked in, followed by a woman about the same age as her and a slightly older guy. _Did the FBI just go to a fashion shoot and pick the three people that looked best in suits?_ She thought to herself, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. The woman was looking at her intently, grey eyes concerned. Riley decided to ignore it. FBI types loved psyching cops out.

"We need to look through some of the birth records. Standard stuff, really. I just needed the extra eyes or I'll be in your hair for weeks." Sam gave her a look that somehow conveyed how apologetic he was for bothering her and how serious he was about the task at hand.

"Wouldn't want that," Riley agreed, lifting the corner of her mouth in a teasing smile. "Follow, me, agents." Standing up, she led them down in to the records room, keying in her code at the door. "I've got a lot to cover, so just yell if you need something," she said, looking distracted and shaking her head a little.

"You okay, detective?" Kail asked, her gaze having moved very little from Riley since she first stepped in to the office. Riley had even felt it boring in to her back while they were walking down to the records room.

"Yeah, just a lot to do. You wouldn't think so in a small town like this, but..." she trailed off, shrugging. "Good luck, agents," she gave them a semi-bright smile and left them, not closing the door behind her.

"Okay," Dean sighed, heading over to the first filing cabinet he found. "I'll take A through F. Kail, you take-"

"There's no need," Kail interrupted, suddenly looking resigned. "I know where it is."

"You think it's at the detective's place?" Sam asked. "I saw you using your glowy eyes on her while we were walking down to the records room."

Kail nodded, not looking like she was pleased about the discovery. She looked more confused than anything. "Her soul looked so... dark, like there was a shadow over it or something. You don't see that often."

"And you're sure it's this bogeyman that's doing it?"

"There are very few things that can do that kind of damage to a soul, and I'm sure it's not any of them. It has to be this thing."

"What else could have done it?" Sam inquired out of sheer interest.

"Hard drug addiction, being possessed for too long, stuff like that," Kail answered. "It's just that, even if it is hard drugs, she would've had to be addicted to them for about fifty years to hit that level. Same goes for demonic possession. Now, do you want to keep interviewing me or find her address so we can take this thing down?"

...

"So what do we know?"

"Detective Riley Hutchinson. Born and raised in Winslow. Lives on Warren Avenue, right near the Baptist church with her husband and little girl," Kail listed from the backseat of the impala, head buried in various files and maps.

"Will anyone be home?"

Kail shook her head, then realised that Dean wasn't watching her in the rear-view mirror. "No," she verbalised. "The husband seems to work a nine-to-five job and the girl just started grade school. We should have enough time to gank the thing without them even knowing it."

"Which we do... how, exactly?" Dean asked, hoping that at least one person in the car would know the answer. "We can't just torch the thing like last time."

"Bobby did some digging for us. He says the best he can figure is that iron should do the trick," Sam answered.

"And then he gets on our case for doing half-assed research?" Dean muttered.

"Think it's some kind of fairy?" Kail wondered aloud, already reaching in to her boot to pull out her knife. "It makes sense. About ninety percent of the creatures in Africa are fairies gone rampant."

Sam glanced back at Kail, genuinely interested. "Why's that?"

Kail shrugged, checking the knife for sharpness. It was double-edged, with one half appearing to be distinctly lighter than the other. The handle was nothing fancy; just dark, polished wood. "I guess that the courts' power doesn't reach that far, which is attractive to all the fairies that don't like following the rules. It's pure lawlessness."

"You don't seem to have any trouble making deals with them, though," Dean pointed out.

"All of them are bound to certain unbreakable rules. The courts just control to which extent they're followed. It's easy to bargain with them, if you do it right. It's also pretty useful, as you saw."

"So can't we just make a deal with this one?"

"And say what? That it has to play nice from now on?" Kail raised a sceptical eyebrow. "What would we trade? It's a pretty tall order and, unless you have any first-borns lying around, I doubt this thing's going to budge."

"So we go the old-fashioned route and kill it?" Dean checked.

"That's the idea," Kail confirmed, closing up the files splayed around her.

"Good. I've been wanting to kick something's ass for a while."

...

"Okay, if anyone makes another in-the-closet joke, I'm going to punch them,' Kail announced in a whisper as they made their way up the stairs of the Hutchinson household. They had swept the ground floor, checking every closet and dark corner and finding nothing. They'd expected this, though.

"You laughed at the first few," Sam remarked, speaking in hushed tones. They moved swiftly, with Sam guarding the rear.

"They all start sounding the same after the first five or so."

"She's not wrong," Dean shrugged, reaching the top of the stairs first. "Okay, I'll take the rooms on the left. Kail, you take the ones on the right and Sam, you take the closets in the hall. If you find anything, just yell. It's in here somewhere."

Kail and Sam nodded, heading off in their respective directions, guns held low. While each of them had their own iron knives, pure iron rounds, they agreed, would probably make a much bigger impact.

Dean made his way down the hall to the left, careful to make as little sound as possible. The first room that he came upon appeared to belong to the Detective's daughter. Rather than being pink and frilly, it was all crisp, apple-green with animal-pictures hanging off the walls. Not a single doll or teddy-bear was in sight. Dean liked this kid.

Cautiously, Dean approached the closet door, which had giraffes painted on it, on the far side of the room. He dug one hand in to his pocket, ready to spill the salt inside, while the other hand, holding the gun, was trained on the closet door, which he nudged open with his foot. He knew that fairies could make themselves invisible, but hey, he wasn't even sure if this thing _was_ some kind of fairy. All he knew was that, if anything in that closet moved, he'd shoot it so fast that it wouldn't know what was happening. After his initial entry elicited no movement, Dean let some of the salt fall from his pocket, waiting for something to come out and count it. Nothing did.

Sam stopped at the first linen-closet that he found and, following the same procedure as Dean, bumped the door open with his foot, intently watching for any movement. Just as he was about to spill some of the salt in his pocket, he heard a cry coming from the direction in which he'd seen Kail heading. Salt splaying everywhere in his urgency, Sam bolted for the room.

Kail was kneeling on the floor, head between her hands, eyes squeezed shut. In front of her lay her dropped gun and the open closet door. She was in what appeared to be the master bedroom, which, while not exactly stylish, was functional and large enough to house a walk-in closet. The door, in front of which Kail was kneeling, was slightly ajar.

"Kail!" Sam rushed to her side, his shout alerting Dean to the fact that something was wrong. Dean dropped everything.

"Kill it," Kail instructed through gritted teeth, moving away from Sam and nodding towards the closet. A pair of golden eyes was watching her from the upper corner, which was so shrouded in shadows that no other part of the creature could be seen.

Needing no further instruction, Sam swung and aimed right between the eyes, firing the shot before he'd even completed the arc of his turn. Like two bright flames, the eyes suddenly went out. A few brief moments followed in which Sam believed that, just like that, he'd managed to kill the thing. Of course, it's never that easy. The moment that Sam realised that Kail was still in some sort of pain, he felt himself flung up against the wall, knocking over a framed landscape and remaining there, stuck by an invisible force.

Dean entered the room just in time to see Sam thrown across it. He didn't even need to catch a glimpse of Kail, who was prone on the floor, before he made directly for the closet, gun raised high. At first, there was no movement. Deftly, though, Dean switched on the lights and, immediately, a shoebox in the back fell over, as if something had leapt from it. Dean fired without pause and waited, only to see the bright yellow eyes reappear, oddly unattached to anything, about a foot from his face. Though he couldn't be sure, he could've sworn the thing was smiling.

"Too late," it whispered before the eyes blinked out again.

"What the hell-" Dean was cut short as Kail stood up and lunged for him, knife in hand. He swore and dodged. That was some fast work the thing had done on Kail, but apparently it was just strong enough to turn her hostile. Crap.

"Dean, look, I have to do this, okay? You don't understand now, but you will. It's really important," Kail said in her most reassuring tones as she circled Dean, reversing her grip on the knife.

Dean stepped in time with her so that she didn't come any closer. "Okay, Kail. Let's talk about this. We don't have to fight. Just tell me- dammit!" He was cut short again as Kail moved forwards, this time faster and lower than before. On pure instinct, he managed to grab the wrist of her knife-hand and twist, forcing her to drop the weapon. She gave a cry of pain, but manoeuvred her body with the motion of Dean's twist, allowing her to bring her leg up towards his face. Dean caught a glancing blow from her knee, which made him let go of her wrist long enough for her to retreat a safe enough distance to plan her next assault.

The creature, evidently distracted by the intensity of the fight, ceased pinning Sam to the wall. Not hesitating to take advantage of this, Sam dived forwards, grabbing Kail from behind and lifting her up in a bear-hug, her arms stuck to her sides by Sam's grip. Kail immediately started kicking and squirming, trying to work her way away from Sam, but to no avail. Still, her efforts did have some effect on Sam, who was having more trouble than he should've been.

"Can't hold her forever, Dean. Kill it," Sam grunted as one of Kail's feet hit his shin.

Dean cast about, searching for the golden eyes, then swore and dumped all of the salt out of his pocket, hoping that Kail's fairy theory had been right.

Jackpot. The eyes appeared again, this time down-cast towards the grains of salt at Dean's feet. Triumphantly, Dean grabbed Kail's knife off the floor and swung it down-wards, directly towards the eyes. He felt it connect with solid mass and, as he watched, the creature flickered between visible and invisible, revealing a vaguely feline figure that would've been about four feet tall had it been standing upright. It let out a hissing bellow, clawed hands digging in to the carpet in pain and fury. After what felt like hours, its death-screams soon faded and Dean pulled out the knife, wiping it clean on the creature's dark, hairy body.

Kail's struggling stopped and she suddenly went slack in Sam's arms, causing him to almost drop her due to the sudden weight. Still, he hung on, suspecting some sort of ploy. "I'm thinking maybe we should tie her up until we're sure that she doesn't still wanna kill us," Sam panted.

Picking their stuff off of the floor, Dean nodded, disturbed by how strong a fight Kail had put up and the way her face had been so deadly calm while she did it. What bothered him even more was the fact that he could've sworn that, at the moment that he had twisted her wrist, her eyes had turned black.

...

"This is really unnecessary, guys," Kail sighed as she shifted around in the chair back in the Winchesters' hotel room, trying to find some sort of comfort around her bound hands and feet.

"Yeah, well, it was unnecessary for you to try and shank me, but it happened anyway," Dean pointed out, pacing back and forth while he tried to figure out what to do.

Kail rolled her eyes and gave up on trying to relieve her aching limbs. "It's dead, Dean. It has zero hold on me, so I don't want to kill you anymore," she said impatiently. "If you keep me tied up much longer, though, that might change."

Sam looked down at Kail sympathetically. The ropes were already rubbing her wrists raw. "We can't really believe what you're saying, Kail. You could just be lying so that we let you go long enough to kill us."

"Well what are you going to do? Wait for me to pinky-promise not to kill you? The only one who can tell you whether I'm clean or not is me." Kail was obviously not in a very patient or understanding mood.

"Why do you think Dean has his thinking face on?" Sam said drily, throwing a glance at his brother, who was watching Kail intently.

"Look, just let me go. Even if I do try something, you managed to hold me off reasonably well before," Kail reasoned. Dean's face didn't budge and she let out a groan. "You could at least tie me to a bed or something so that I could get some sleep."

This seemed to jolt Dean out of whatever reverie he was in. He gave Kail a wary look before shrugging. "Cut her loose, Sammy. Let's see if she tries anything."

Sam, looking like he had been about to do so anyway, knelt down next to Kail to untie her bonds. Once she was free, she stood up, stretched and headed for the door, rubbing her wrists. She looked reasonably un-murderous. "Good night, guys. Good job today. And look, you're still alive!" she smiled sarcastically, giving them a brief wave before closing their door and quickly making her way in to her own room.

The moment that Kail was alone, she collapsed on her bed, surprised that she had even been able to make the walk back to her room. After a long silence in which she almost fell asleep, she called quietly, "Castiel, I could really use some help."

The angel appeared several moments later, filling the air with his darkened, immense power. Kail almost instantly regretted having called him. "What happened?"

"The thing we were hunting. It broke the barrier, Castiel. I just need you to put it back really quickly. I would, but I can barely do a basic healing on someone else at this point, never mind do what this kind of work takes." Kail's expression was both tired and hurt, as if she was suffering from pain that she didn't want to talk about.

Mild concern crossed Castiel's features, which was about the best that Kail could hope for. He moved closer and pressed a hand to her shoulder, making her shudder at his touch. It was just so _wrong_. "How long has it been down?"

"An hour or two, tops," Kail answered through gritted teeth, having to focus all of her concentration in to not pulling away from Castiel.

"This'll hurt," Castiel stated simply, before channelling his power in to fixing Kail.

She squeezed her eyes shut, both hands making fists in the sheets of her bed. A whimper tore itself from her throat but, beyond that, she managed to keep the noise to a minimum. After what seemed like forever, Castiel pulled his hand away from Kail's shoulder and watched her slowly pull herself together again, his eyes passionless and unsympathetic.

Kail shivered and wiped at her eyes, which had been pooling with tears. Hell's bells, she hated it when that had to be done. "You know that there are ways to make it less painful, right?" she asked, sitting up gingerly.

Castiel ignored this. "I didn't get all of it. Will you still be able to-"

Kail cut Castiel off. "No need. I finished last night, by some miracle." She sounded shaky and out of breath, even though she was trying for nonchalant. "So there you go. The Winchesters are all taken care of."

"You're sure?"

"All the signs are showing, Castiel. Dean was a challenge, what with all the time it took just to get him to stop thinking I wanted to kill him, but I took care of the problem."

"And what problem was that?" Dean asked, stony-faced, as he let himself in to Kail's room. His glare wove between Castiel and Kail. "I'd talk fast if I were you because, after what I heard, I'm pretty freaking pissed."


End file.
